


invisible string

by LFTPD



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M, Trans Ben Wyatt, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:42:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 37,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25639711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LFTPD/pseuds/LFTPD
Summary: Partridge, Minnesota bounces around her head for a moment. It takes her a minute to place it, but then the name Wyatt finally clicks—how? She’d followed the story religiously, of course. A girl her own age who’d not only ran for mayor, but won in a landslide?! Leslie had clipped out every article she could find and put them on her wall. There had been the start of a scrapbook, at one point, but it had fizzled out when Leslie had gotten distracted with a term report. There'd even been a photo on her wall of inspirational women for a few years, before being replaced with Condoleezza Rice in the early 2000s. That’s an odd thought to have when staring at the man in front of her.
Relationships: Leslie Knope/Ben Wyatt
Comments: 56
Kudos: 82





	1. Chapter 1

Leslie isn’t sure why she just agreed to go out for a beer with a coworker at ten in the morning. Can she really even call Ben a coworker? He’s an outsider, a snake sent from the fiery pits of hell to destroy everything she’s spent her entire career building. He ruins lives and slashes budgets without feeling an ounce of remorse. He probably even kicks babies in his spare time. Actually, if she thinks about it, he’s metaphorically kicking all of the children of Pawnee by defunding their programs. Without summer movie nights at the park, the children of Pawnee will have no choice but to spend their free time shooting up drugs or vandalizing historical monuments. Ben Wyatt is single-handedly creating an army of Greg Pikitus clones!

She’s halfway from verbalizing this rant when she remembers that she came to apologize. She’s always been the type of person to fly from zero to one hundred in most aspects of her life, and Ben Wyatt is no exception. She takes a deep breath and orders the same beer that he does, resolving to at least give the man a chance. Chris is a nice guy, and he seems fond of Ben. Clearly he can’t be a completely fascist hard ass.

Leslie doesn’t normally drink anything that doesn’t come with a sugared rim, so she doesn’t have very high expectations when she sips her beer. As far as beers go, it’s fine, but she would have much rathered something that came blended with a little umbrella in it. Oh, or that drink she’d had at The Snakehole that had a cotton candy garnish. Still, since she’s resolving to be polite, she compliments the beer after her first sip. The alcohol soothes the sting of her hangover, and that’s something.

“I’m sorry that I yelled at you,” she begins, and then adds, “All three times. But I don’t think you know anything about my department. Have you ever been part of a government body before?”

Ben meets her gaze warily, and she notices that his grip on his beer is a little tighter. He tells her that he has, and the name Partridge, Minnesota bounces around her head for a moment. It takes her a minute to place it, but then the name Wyatt finally clicks—how? She looks over at him with confusion, trying to work it out. She’d followed the story religiously, of course. A girl her own age who’d not only ran for mayor, but won in a landslide?! Leslie had clipped out every article she could find and put them on her wall. There had been the start of a scrapbook, at one point, but it had fizzled out when Leslie had gotten distracted with a term report. She had even been on Leslie’s wall of inspirational women for a few years, before Condoleezza Rice replaced her spot in the early 2000s. That’s an odd thought to have when staring at the man in front of her.

“I followed your campaign,” Leslie says after a beat, unsure of what else to say. If she’s right—if the Ben Wyatt sitting next to her is the same person as the Girl Mayor—then Leslie doesn’t want to say the wrong thing. She’s spent enough time with her friends at The Bulge to know that she shouldn’t call him by his old name, but she doesn’t know what other rules there are. She’s slipped up before on things like this, out of ignorance rather than ill intent, but there’s always been someone like April or Ann there to roll their eyes or gently correct her. Now she’s on her own, and she’s annoyed that she’s never really taken the time to educate herself. Suddenly she finds herself caring about hurting Ben’s feelings, which hasn’t been a concern any of the three times she’s yelled at him in the past few days. It’s a strange feeling.

“I’ve changed a lot since then,” Ben said, and Leslie understands it as both acknowledging his past and discouraging questions. She can respect that. Still, he’s the one that brought Partridge up, so she figures she’s allowed to comment a little more. She’ll just focus on the mayor part, and not so much on the Girl Mayor part. She’d always thought Girl Mayor was an infantilizing and sexist nickname, anyway.

“God, I was so jealous of you,” Leslie says with a smile.

“You shouldn’t have been,” he tells her, “It ended up kind of ruining my life. I mean, now I’m balancing budgets so I can show people I’m responsible, so that—” He trails off, taking another sip of his beer.

She gives him a moment, taking her own sip of beer. God, she really wishes there was more sugar in beer.

“You want to run for office someday, right?” Ben asks, breaking the silence. Leslie startles at it; how did he know? He goes on about how she needs to be able to make hard decisions, to be harsh, to show that she’s a responsible grown up. Leslie can read between the lines. She can tell that he’s talking about himself too, and it’s the most likeable she’s found him since they’d met.

Ben goes to pay, and Leslie finds herself grinning. “Oh no, Mr. Mayor, please, let me,” she says before she can overthink it, and she notices his eyes soften a little at the title. When she throws down her card with a lyric from a one-hit wonder, his grin is fond despite the teasing.

Any positive feelings for Ben go out the window when she learns about the government shutdown. She doesn’t have a binder for this. Why on Earth hasn’t she already made a government shutdown binder? She goes to work straight away, spending the next two days trying her hardest to convince Ron to make her essential. She listens to passionate citizens demand answers, and she wishes she had some for them. She loves seeing how much they care, even if they tend to show it in strange ways. She schedules fourteen meetings with Ben, desperate to get someone to hear her side of view. And finally, maybe, she’s getting somewhere. Chris is just as upset as she is about the Freddy Spaghetti concert, and she has the first tiny swell of hope since this entire thing started.

And then Ben walks in, and just like that, it’s gone.

“Pawnee is not special, okay?” he says, and goes on to say that her department is not a priority, and she’s not essential. Three low blows, one after another, like he doesn’t even realize how hard he’s cutting. She’s been told no her entire life, and she’s not going to let him have this one. Freddy Spaghetti will sing. She’s going to give the children of Pawnee the summer concert they deserve, government shutdown be damned.

* * *

Ben is having a very long week. Nothing about this assignment had seemed any different from any of the others he and Chris had been on. Indiana’s eighth biggest city had mismanaged themselves into a fiscal nightmare, and now it's their job to put it back to rights. Chris will play good cop, he'll play bad cop, and then Ben will go back to his crappy motel room, watch Star Trek, and eat takeout alone. A few weeks of this, and then rinse and repeat in a new town. Maybe a two week break back in Indy if they're lucky, but that's the job.

Until Leslie Knope. Ben has dealt with angry government employees before, of course, but Leslie is something else. She calls him a jerk two minutes into their first meeting, which is a first. Usually people start off polite, then move to pleading, and finally mumbled threats as Ben walks out of the room.

She’s cute, though, and it’s clear that her anger is the result of caring too much. So when he sees her at the club, he decides to try to start over. Maybe they can reach common ground over a few drinks, or at least not be openly hostile to each other.

As it turns out, they cannot reach common ground. Ben figures it’s probably his own fault. He should’ve known better than trying to reason with her when she’s been drinking. He goes back to his motel room irritated, but he can’t deny that there’s something endearing about her. If she hadn’t been yelling at him, he would’ve almost found her cute. Claiming to have talked to everyone in the bar, really? Holding out her hand like she expected him to kiss it? Leslie Knope certainly keeps things entertaining.

That's why Ben asks her to grab a beer the next day. His head hurts from staring at spreadsheets—and no, Chris, that doesn’t mean he needs glasses or a vitamin A supplement—and he can tell she’s feeling a little hungover from the night before. They’ll leave City Hall and maybe then he’ll finally be able to reach her. That’s his plan.

Telling her about Partridge was never part of his plan. Ben doesn’t tell people about Partridge as a rule. Talking about Partridge leads to talking about transitioning, and well, Indiana can be progressive but it’s still a red state. Even those that mean well can make for an uncomfortable working environment, and given how much Leslie dislikes him, he’s not sure she’ll mean well. But it comes out, and he sees in her eyes the moment she realizes who he is. Who he was. He steels himself for the barrage of personal questions. She doesn’t quite seem the type to jump to asking about his genitals, but he’s been surprised before. But she doesn’t ask any of that. She listens to him when he explains why Partridge was a mistake, and she teases him as she pays their bill.

He lets himself relax when she doesn’t treat him any differently. She’s still direct, and blunt, and angry about the shutdown. She wedges herself in his office and refuses to leave. She does everything she can to get under his skin, but she never outs him. It’s a low bar, obviously, but it still means something to him. It still makes his stomach sink when he realizes what the numbers make very clear: he has to fire Leslie Knope. He goes over it three times. He even asks Chris to double check, hoping he’ll spot something that Ben didn’t. But there’s no getting out of it. Firing Leslie makes the most fiscal sense. He has to be impartial.

Leslie Knope makes it very hard to be impartial. Ben knows she’s up to something when Ron’s phone shoots off during the middle of their committee meeting, and he hears him bark the name Leslie into the phone before the door shuts. It comes out when he finally makes the case to fire her. He hadn’t expected Ron to be so loyal since only minutes before he’d been giggling over the closure of the summer splash pads. Apparently his hatred of government doesn’t extend to Leslie, and now Ben has to defend the decision to fire her even though he doesn’t want to either. He’s almost grateful when Ron lets it slip about the concert. Running to shut down an unsanctioned children’s concert is easier than fighting to fire the city employee who seems to care the most.

“No, here’s the thing, though, Ben,” Leslie starts, just as passionate about this as she’s been about everything else. “It’s not cancelled. We’re putting it on.”

It should piss him off, really. He should feel like she’s directly disobeying him, because really, she is. He’s not her boss, exactly, but his position puts him above her. He should feel like she’s walking all over him, and ignoring that he’s only trying to help the city she cares so much about. But as she lists all the work she’s managed to do that day, how she’s somehow gotten local businesses to donate their time and services, he’s not angry. He’s just impressed. She got this entire thing set up in one morning. There are bouncy houses, what he thinks is a petting zoo, and even food trucks. When someone says that the entertainer cancelled, he feels just as disappointed as they all do. He has to shut this down. It’s his job. But that doesn’t mean he wanted it to fail.

So he drives to Eagleton, and he pays most of a month’s rent on a children’s performer who could use a shower. They get back a little too late, and he can’t help the grin as he watches Leslie try to sing to a crowd of unimpressed children. She never gives up, does she?

She comes to stand by him at the edge of the stage, and she’s smiling for the first time. “Why did you do this?” she asks as they listen, and Ben can’t let himself be completely honest.

“Well, I’m not a monster. I want the kids to have their concert,” he says, when he means ‘I wanted you to have your concert.’ You didn’t deserve to fail, he thinks.

She calls him Mean Ben, and that makes him smile. It’s dumb, and so far down on the list of insults he’s been called. But it’s not personal, and he’s starting to think, maybe, that she realizes that none of this is personal. He really doesn’t want to hurt her, or any of the citizens she cares so much about.

He tries to warn her about what’s coming, but she cuts him off. He lets her win, lets himself live in the moment for a second. He even throws a joke her way, grins as she walks off to go oversee the rest of the concert. When she walks into the next budget meeting with ESSENTIAL written on her badge, he can’t pretend he’s not happy to see her.


	2. Chapter 2

Pawnee isn’t the first government shutdown that Ben has experienced. If he’s being honest, government shutdowns tend to be the most relaxing part of his job. Sure, there’s the push to solve things as quickly as possible so that people can get back to work. He doesn’t take that lightly; government workers don’t make enough money to be blasé about going weeks without a paycheck. But, on a more selfish note, government shutdowns mean that there are fewer people around to pick fights with Ben or try to sabotage his efforts. Leslie Knope, however, picks enough fights to make up for the empty halls.

Even still, it’s a very productive summer. He keeps his head down, works hard, and does his best to resist Chris’ efforts to get him out of his motel room. He’s dragged out to bars and restaurants, each time with the promise that they have literally the best food that Chris has ever tasted. They even frequent the Snakehole a few times, which Ben knows is an unsubtle attempt to see the nurse Chris has been pursuing since their first week in Pawnee. Chris isn’t used to being rejected, and Ben has a feeling he’ll wear Ann down eventually. Ben isn’t sure he’d ever want to be in a relationship that required wearing down, but he doesn’t say that.

They only run into her once, midway through the summer. And because that’s exactly Ben’s luck, she happens to be sitting at the bar with one Leslie Knope. It’s early in the night, and neither of them seem to be that drunk yet. That’s the only reason Ben lets Chris drag him over to the bar.

“Leslie Knope and Ann Perkins! You two are literally the people I was most hoping to see tonight,” Chris says with a wide smile, sitting next to Ann at the end of the bar. Ben can see that neither of the women look all that pleased to see them. Unfortunately for him, the only other open seat is right next to Leslie, so he takes it with a sigh and orders his drink.

“I’ve been thinking,” Leslie starts, before Ben has taken a sip of his beer. “The community garden could actually create revenue for the city. If we pair with the weekly farmer’s market, then we can fund the garden through the proceeds. There’s no reason—”

This is going to be a long night, Ben thinks. “While I appreciate your enthusiasm, Leslie, we’ve already canceled the farmer’s market. That’s a nonstarter.”

Her face scrunches up in the way that Ben is already too familiar with, ready to dive into a long and probably thoroughly researched argument. Ben cuts her off before she can get started. “Besides,” he says with a teasing grin, “I didn’t think you were a fan of vegetables.” He gestures to her drink, which is the color of chocolate and topped with what looks to be whipped cream.

“Vegetables are the worst, but that’s not the point,” Leslie frowns. “And my best friend, the beautiful and effervescent Ann Perkins, is the greatest nurse since Florence Nightingale. She’s concerned about the diabetes rates in Pawnee, and she thinks the community garden is a great way to combat that. Right, Ann?”

Ann turns away from Chris at the sound of her name, clearly glad to have an excuse to stop him in his tracks. “Yes,” she says decisively. “Wait, sorry, what am I agreeing to?”

“Leslie said that she’s glad that we can all maintain a healthy work-life balance, and talk about things other than the government shutdown outside of the office,” Ben says, and Ann looks at Leslie fondly.

“I did not!” Leslie protests. “I was just telling Ben—”

“That you want to dance?” Ann interrupts, quickly downing the rest of her drink. “Me too! Let’s go, Leslie!” She pulls her off of her stool and onto the floor, and Ben has to stop Chris from following them.

“I think they wanted to have a girls’ night,” Ben says gently, moving two seats down to sit next to Chris.

“Fostering close friendships is important,” Chris agrees with an eager nod. “In fact, I read an article that stated that people with a close support network have longer lifespans.” He reaches out to grab Ben’s shoulder, squeezing firmly. “It is one of the reasons that I am literally ecstatic to call you my best friend, Ben Wyatt.”

Ben grins back at him, clinking his beer to Chris’ glass. “Thanks for dragging me out tonight,” he says, and they both glance over across the room to where Ann and Leslie are dancing.

When he casually mentions the night out a few days later on a phone call to Steph, she won’t let him drop it.

“Is this the same Leslie that brought muffins to a committee meeting and then said you weren’t allowed to eat any of them unless you apologized to the senior citizens for cutting their bingo night?” Steph asks with an amused laugh.

“One and the same,” he says, leaning back against the headboard of his motel bed. “She’s not so bad, really, and Chris is crazy about her best friend.”

“She sounds like a pain in the ass,” Steph says. “So there’s clearly something you’re not telling me. You’re not usually so nice about the people who make your job hell.”

“She doesn’t—it’s really not that bad,” Ben sighs, wishing that he hadn’t mentioned the woman who had followed him around Food and Stuff chanting ‘turd boy’ at him with her poorly behaved children. He’s sure the story didn’t leave the best impression of Pawnee. “Leslie’s really invested in her community. I can’t fault her for caring too much.”

“Is she single? Hot?” Steph asks, and Ben’s glad she’s not there to see him blushing. She might be his younger sister, but she teases him almost as much as Henry does. Her teasing is a little less mean-spirited, at least.

“She’s—I mean, I don’t make it a point of learning the marital status of government employees, so—”

“So she is cute,” Steph laughs. “Benji’s got himself a crush. Are you going to do anything about it?”

“That wouldn’t be professional,” Ben says, realizing too late that he should’ve denied having a crush. “And besides…” he trails off, not sure what excuse to give.

“She doesn’t know you’re trans?” Steph guesses in a soft voice. “Benji, you can't keep letting that stop you from dating.”

“She does know, actually,” Ben says, rubbing at a wrinkle in his slacks. “I told her the first week we were here.”

“And?” Steph asks, and Ben sighs.

“And nothing. She was fine. Perfectly polite,” Ben says. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to date her. Just because someone isn’t transphobic doesn’t mean I have to date them.”

“You know that’s not what I’m saying,” Steph says, and Ben can practically hear her roll her eyes. “I’ll drop it for now, but I’m serious, Benji. You’re going to have to settle down eventually.”

“Like Dad’s doing?” Ben says, and he’s grateful when the conversation turns to their father and his latest barely legal girlfriend.

* * *

The summer ends, and so does the government shut down. Leslie has never been happier than when she’s rounding up the gang, getting everyone back to work. Her budget is almost nonexistent, but she’s feeling refreshed and ready to make it work. There’s no challenge she can’t conquer with her team around her and a color coded pile of idea binders. When Ben comes into the Parks Department and tells them to focus on maintenance, she’s not willing to let that stop her.

Ann comes by to bring her coffee and celebrate her first day back, and that plants the seed of an idea into her mind. Is it ethical? No, probably not, but is it the right thing to do? Also no, but Leslie is running out of options. If Ben won’t give her department money, maybe Chris will. And Chris seems to like Ann—because who wouldn’t like Ann? She’s the most beautiful and talented nurse to grace Pawnee with her presence. So she convinces Ann to finally go out with him, and coaches her on how to steer the conversation towards the budget.

When Leslie was in fourth grade, she got her first ever B on a group project about the Three Year Fire of Pawnee. “Leslie has thorough research skills and is an engaging public speaker, but she struggles with team exercises. She could benefit from learning to delegate,” was how Mrs. Kolphner had put it at a parent-teacher conference. Leslie had been livid—how dare she? But perhaps there was some truth to it after all, because she finds herself hiding out in the parking lot of the restaurant where Chris and Ann are on their date. It’s not that she doesn’t trust Ann. It’s just that this is such an important mission, and if Ann can’t make it happen, then it’s going to fall to Leslie to save the Parks Department’s budget.

She crashes their date, and Ann doesn’t look as relieved to see her as she should. She’s barely a sentence into her pitch when Ben Wyatt interrupts her, because of course he followed them here too. She tries to pull him away and convince him to go home, and then he has the nerve to tell her that she’s not good at being sneaky. Her Ramsett Park Hide’n’Seek trophy from 2008 would like to have a word with him, but that’s neither here nor there.

Chris invites them to all have dinner, and that’s how she finds herself in the middle of what feels like a very awkward double date. Ben interrupts every time she tries to bring up the budget, and Chris is entirely too positive and oblivious every time. Ann has her back, but the meal still ends without accomplishing anything. The night is starting to feel like a complete waste.

Chris suggests getting a drink, and so of course they go to the Bulge. There’s a part of her—a very, very small part of her—that maybe thinks that Ben will be impressed by the fact that she’s so popular at The Bulge. Maybe he’ll see how cool she is, drink the cocktail that’s named after her, and realize that he should take the stick out of his admittedly cute butt and just let her have her money.

That doesn’t happen.

Chris grins at everyone, and buys a table of men drinks. Ann somehow looks like she’s having a nice night even though they’re still nowhere close to getting the money they need. Ben’s been acting weird since they got here, distancing himself from the group and not making much eye contact with anyone. She goes to sit with him at the bar, and if that’s partly motivated by letting him see that she gets free drinks here, well, who can blame her? He looks over at her when her drink is comped, and she explains the gay penguin debacle. He grins, visibly relaxing for the first time since he walked into The Bulge.

“A penguin wedding? That’s cute,” he says, which is exactly what she’d said all along! She starts to respond, ready to shift the conversation to their budget, but Ben keeps talking. “When you said we should come here for a drink, I thought it was just because I’m trans,” he admits in a voice so quiet she has to strain to hear it under the music.

“Oh,” she says, her eyes widening. “Oh, no, God no. I wasn’t thinking about you at all. Wait, that came out wrong, I meant—” she’s got her foot in her mouth, and she knows she’s not going to be able to say the right thing.

“It’s fine,” Ben says, smiling over at her. “I didn’t even realize Pawnee had a gay bar. This is a pretty nice place.”

“It’s my favorite bar,” Leslie says with a sip of her drink, “And not just because I drink for free. Everyone’s really nice here, and I don’t get groped when I dance. Win-win.”

“Chris and Ann look like they’re having a nice time,” Ben says, glancing over at them, and that’s a great reminder of why they’re there in the first place.

“Enough about Chris and Ann, why don’t you think I should have the money?” Leslie demands. Ben laughs at her like she’s joking, but when she doesn’t stop staring him down he relents.

“Look,” he says, and he’s already looking more put together than he was the last time he talked about Partridge. He tells her about Ice Town, and she wonders how many people he’s shared that story with. “The newspaper headline was Ice Town Costs Ice Clown her Town Crown.”

“Yuck,” Leslie says, thinking that even Shauna Malwae-Tweep wouldn’t be that cutting. She doesn’t like Ben, but something about how vulnerable he’d been with her just moments before and the look on his face when he’d said ‘her’ has Leslie wanting to comfort him.

“I think Ice Town sounds great,” she offers. “And the point is, at least you tried something.” She tries to ignore the way her stomach flips when Ben smiles at her.

The evening falls apart, and she reveals their plan to Chris. He looks devastated, Ann looks crushed, and Ben looks disappointed in her before he goes off to comfort his friend. She’s bothered by how much Ben’s reaction bothers her, but she can’t think about that for very long. Ann admits that she’d been enjoying her date, and Leslie realizes how much she’d ended up hurting her friend. She buys her a drink, apologizes profusely, and helps her strategize on a way to make things right. Disappointingly, Ann won’t let her be involved in the Get-Chris-Back mission at all. She won’t even let her call it a mission, but since the whole thing is her fault, Leslie doesn’t fight that point very hard.

The next day is rough, and she chases away her guilt by working as hard as she can. She’s midway through a conversation with Andy when the idea for Harvest Festival hits her, and suddenly the funk of the night before is gone. It takes her twenty minutes to finish writing her pitch, thirty minutes to run to Food and Stuff and the craft store for snacks and props, and fifteen minutes to convince the Parks Department to risk everything for the chance at something great. The presentation for Chris and Ben goes off without a hitch. Jerry doesn’t drop anything, Tom hits his cue, and everyone backs her up. When Ben throws the pumpkin back at her and meets her eyes, the disappointment in his eyes from the night before is finally gone.


	3. Chapter 3

When Ben agreed to the Harvest Festival, he hadn’t realized it would mean spending so much time with Leslie. Now that it’s happening, he can’t say he regrets his decision. Leslie’s constantly in and out of his office, and he’s attended more planning sessions in the Parks Department than he can count. A few of those planning sessions have taken place at Leslie’s favorite diner, which is his first introduction to JJ’s.

In retrospect, the fact that Leslie hasn’t ordered anything already should’ve been his first clue that something was going on. When he gets to JJ’s, Tom and Leslie are already seated, but Leslie isn’t eating. She looks upset, and for a moment Ben wonders if she’s already given her pitch and JJ said no. Her face brightens slightly when Ben sits down, and she hands him a file from her padfolio. He glances over it, but his eyes flash back to Leslie.

“Is something wrong?” Ben asks in a quiet voice, but JJ is coming over to their table before she can respond. She tells him about the Chamber of Commerce meeting, and Ben realizes that she must’ve come down with something. The glazed look in her eyes could be from a fever or from too much cough medicine, and Ben isn’t sure which is worse. It’s unsurprising that Leslie is the type to refuse to call in sick. Ben can already guess how Chris is going to react to that.

They stay for their meal, and Leslie goes through her talking points for her presentation. She only picks at her waffles, though, and even Tom raises an eyebrow at that.

“Maybe you should take the rest of the day to rest,” Ben suggests lightly when she gives up on her food without even making a dent in her pile of whipped cream. “You can take it easy until the Chamber of Commerce meeting.”

“And maybe then you won’t give everyone else your plague,” Tom says with a disgusted look, pushing back his chair. “I’m assuming you’re paying for this as an apology,” he adds, heading out of the diner before Leslie can protest.

“I’m not sick,” she insists, taking a large bite of her waffle as if to prove her point. When she grabs her stomach a moment later, Ben stares pointedly.

“Go home,” he tells her, pulling out his wallet to cover the check. He still can’t wrap his head around the fact that Leslie’s spent a grand on waffles this year. Her order was $7.99, and if he divides that out it means she orders waffles more than twice a week, every week. Looking at it like that, he supposes it’s not quite as extreme as it sounds.

When he stops by her office later that afternoon for their meeting, it’s clear that she’s only gotten worse. She’s completely bundled up, and her eyes are even more glassy than before.

“I am not sick, okay? I just have allergies,” she says, and then proceeds to admit that she’s already thrown up twice today.

Ben reaches out to touch her forehead. For a moment he’s struck by the thought that it’s the first time he’s ever touched her face. He pushes the thought aside as soon as he realizes how hot she is. It’s a fairly significant fever, and she really shouldn’t be at work.

“Alright, you’re burning up,” he says, taking care not to leave his hand on her any longer than necessary.

“You’re burning up,” she responds, which would make him laugh if he weren’t so worried about her. Chris panics and runs out, as expected. It’s left to Ben to make sure Leslie takes care of herself. He can’t say that he minds.

He decides that getting her home is a nonstarter, but maybe he can get her into a doctor’s office instead. When she insists that the only doctor she’ll see is Ann, the most beautiful nurse in the world, he finds himself driving her to the hospital. She refuses to stop working on the drive over, scrambling through her purse to find a pen and jotting things down. Most of what she tells him is gibberish, but a few solid ideas make it through her feverish haze. He files them away for her in his mind, figuring she might not remember them when she recovers.

Ann confirms what he expects.

“104.1,” she says, as Leslie stares blankly into the distance. “Leslie, you’re dehydrated. I’m admitting you.”

Leslie does not go without a fight, but luckily between the two of them, they convince her to stay. He promises her that he can handle the presentation, but he can see the skepticism in her eyes. It stings a little. Does she really think so little of him? At the same time, he knows this is a result of the pressure she’s under. Pressure that he’s indirectly responsible for, by way of his job. That might be part of the reason she doesn’t trust him.

Once Leslie is admitted and in Ann’s capable hands, Ben makes his way back to his car. He’s never been a fan of hospitals, and he breathes a little easier once he’s outside. He’s glad that Leslie has Ann there. He’d always wished that he’d had a familiar face around during his stays.

He tries to work through the presentation with Tom. Tom proves to be useless.

“No, you promised Leslie. See, I never promise anything,” Tom says, and Ben wonders if he’d be talking so freely if they hadn’t finalized the last of the personnel cuts already. He leaves Ben to go to the spa, and Ben tries to remember whether Tom is in a salaried or hourly position. Either way, he knows Tom shouldn’t be soaking on the clock.

Leslie makes it a full hour before she calls him. He knows who it is before he even picks up.

“Great, I caught you,” Leslie says before he can get a word out. “Okay, so let’s talk about your opening remarks. Do you want me to write you a rap?”

Ben knows he needs to cut her off before she gets too far in, but he can’t help but feel slightly amused. She never does anything by halves. “I was just going to introduce myself, non-musically, and then get everyone to refer to their packets, and, uh, blah, blah, blah.”

Leslie takes great offense to ‘blah, blah, blah.’ He hangs up on her before she can make him recount the entire presentation line-by-line, trying to decide if he’s more irritated or amused. Amused wins out, but if Leslie calls him again before the presentation, that might change.

Chris is out, and Ben isn’t sure if he’s actually sick or just being dramatic. Either way, having the office to himself makes for a productive afternoon. Ben wants to do a good job for Leslie, so he puts more time into preparing than he really needs to. Better to be over prepared, he tells himself, rather than admitting how much Leslie’s approval is starting to mean to him. By the time the Chamber of Commerce meeting comes around, he’s feeling confident.

But Leslie doesn’t let him prove himself. She comes barrelling into the Chamber of Commerce meeting, looking only slightly more put together than she did when he left the hospital. When Ben shakes her hand she’s burning up.

There’s no way that she can present; she can’t even manage to pay for her own cab. When he goes out to the front to pay for it, there’s no cab waiting, and he wonders how she’d really made it over from the hospital.

“You know,” he says when he makes it back inside, “I find it a little insulting that you don’t trust me to handle this.” She’s feverish enough that she might not remember it tomorrow, which makes the confrontation a little easier.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, okay?” She says, and he’s worried she might fall over when he stands up. “It’s just—this Harvest Festival is my project. It’s my career on the line. And I just need to make sure that I’ve done everything I can to make it work.”

This level of commitment to her job is bordering on unhealthy, and if she weren’t so feverish he might have told her so. He’s not sure how he’s going to do damage control when she inevitably throws up or falls off the stage, so he’s really not looking forward to it when she stands up to speak.

Then she opens her mouth, and Ben realizes a few things, one after the other. Leslie isn’t unhealthily committed to her job. Well, she might be, but it’s more than that. She’s committed to Pawnee, and to the people in her community. The other realization is that he really needs to stop underestimating Leslie Knope. Her presentation is flawless, and if Ben hadn’t watched her put her badge on upside down twenty minutes ago, he’d have no idea she was sick. Good lord, if this is what she’s capable of when nearly delirious with the flu, what can she accomplish when she’s recovered? It’s one of the most impressive things he’s ever seen.

He’d thought she could pull off Harvest Festival when she had first proposed it. He wouldn’t have approved the project otherwise. But now, after watching her at the podium, he knows it’s true. In fact, he can’t think of any scenarios in which he’d bet against Leslie Knope.

If he’s being completely honest with himself, he’s also a little turned on. Not even reminding himself of how she’d thrown up in the parking lot of the hospital is enough to tamper that thought.

He takes over for her with the Q&A, which means that he doesn’t have a chance to tell her how impressed he is before Tom takes her back to the hospital. It’s been a long day, and when the meeting wraps up the only thing he wants to do is drive back home and sleep. There’s a chance he might be starting to catch Leslie’s flu, which is unsurprising considering how many times he’d touched her today.

But the idea of Leslie alone in the hospital after Ann’s shift ends bothers him more than it should, so he drives out to Grain 'n Simple. He gets there twenty minutes before they close, and he has to call Steph twice in a row before she answers.

“Okay, I don’t have much time,” he says before she can get a word in. “Are you at home? Can you text me a picture of Nana’s chicken soup recipe?”

“Why is Nana’s chicken soup recipe an emergency?” Steph asks skeptically. “I’ve got a toddler dripping wet from the bathtub.”

“My friend’s sick,” Ben says, “and the grocery store is about to close. I’ll make it up to you, c’mon. Please?”

“I’m going,” Steph promises, and he can hear her heading through her house. There’s crying in the background, which makes him feel a little guilty about calling during bedtime. “What friend?”

“Leslie,” Ben says with a sigh. He should’ve known that she’d ask.

“Oh, well if it’s for Leslie, of course.” He can hear the grin in her voice. She’s not going to let this drop for a long time. “Okay, I just found it. I’m hanging up now.”

He makes it all the way back when he realizes that he doesn’t have a way to cook in his motel, and then he has to run out and see where he can buy a crockpot at nine in the evening.

The next day, Chris tells him about the extension, and he agrees before Chris finishes talking. The Harvest Festival is a good excuse, but that doesn’t make it any less of an excuse. They’ve never asked for an extension before.

* * *

Something shifts after Ben comes to visit her at the hospital. Leslie tries not to think about it, because thinking about it means putting a name to the feeling. She’s not ready to do that yet. But she’s always been observant, and she notices when he starts hanging around the Parks Department more than is strictly necessary for his job. He’s part of the Harvest Festival planning, of course, but that doesn’t explain why he sits on a public forum with her about time capsules, or why he brings her coffee for a morning meeting. He even lets her use him as a scapegoat to pacify angry citizens a few times. It might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for her.

If Ann weren’t so busy with Chris, she probably would have noticed. Leslie is really grateful for that. Ben is leaving soon, which means she needs to keep ignoring whatever it is that she’s feeling for him.

Besides, what she’s feeling is strictly professional. She doesn’t feel anything for Ben that she doesn’t feel for Tom or April or Jerry. Okay, well, maybe not Jerry.

Ben starts acting a little odd as they organize the happy hour for the Police Department. First he suggests that they order salads and calzones, which is probably the dumbest idea he’s ever had. And then when they get to the bar, it’s like he can’t stand still. Even a beer can’t loosen him up, and she nearly cringes as he stumbles over all of his words. If she weren’t so distracted by the Ron and Tammy debacle, she’d pull him aside and demand to know what the issue is, but as it stands all she learns is that he’s nervous around cops.

Ben is the most straight-laced person she’s ever met. She doubts he’s had many interactions with cops in the past. It’s a little ridiculous, honestly.

And then things fall to shit, and she has to drag Ben with her to go bail Ron out of jail. Ben’s just as awkward as he was the night before, and he’s clearly irritated that she wasted her favor on Ron. She knows he has a point. In any other circumstance, the Harvest Festival would be her priority, but Ron is her friend. She can’t just abandon him to the wolves, or worse, the library.

In the end, they get their favor. Ben comes into her office at the end of a long day, and drops the news that he’s already figured everything out with the Chief. She’s not used to having someone in her court. She’s used to having to do everything on her own, and the knowledge that he’s helped her sends those not-quite-feelings to the surface. That’s why she agrees to get dinner with him.

“Can I ask a personal question?” she asks as she sips her sweet tea. Ben looks up from his menu, and can see the hesitance on his face.

“What kind of personal question?” he says slowly, and she realizes what he must be thinking. She’d spent a few nights researching so that she’d stop accidentally saying the wrong thing, but it’s still so easy to forget that he’s trans.

“About cops,” she clarifies, and she notices his shoulders relax again. “Is there a reason you’re so terrified of cops?”

Ben taps his fingers against his menu, considering it for a moment. “There’s a reason,” he finally says. “Well, beyond the fact that they have guns, which is a valid reason to be afraid of anyone.”

“Sure,” Leslie says with an amused smile. “Beyond that, what’s the reason?”

“Prison isn’t a great place to be trans,” he says bluntly. “I could end up in a women’s prison, and there’s no way I’d get the medical care I need. I’ve heard stories, and it’s… It’s horrific. So, yeah, cops make me nervous.” He shrugs, as if it’s a casual answer, but Leslie can see how serious it is.

Leslie hadn’t expected a real answer. She’d thought there might be some funny story, some childhood run in with the cops that left a bad impression on Ben. She’s realizing, again, just how ignorant she is to all of this despite all of her research.

“Oh god, that’s awful,” Leslie says, and she’s hit by what it means that Ben went to talk to the Chief for her. He’d faced this fear—this huge, valid fear—because he believed in their project that much. Her not-quite-feelings are back with a vengeance. “I can understand why you’d be wary.”

“I could probably learn to handle my fear better,” he says with a cute self-deprecating smile. “Did I tell you that the Chief called me Calzone Boy when I walked into his office?”

The conversation shifts, but Leslie can’t get the thought of what Ben did for her out of her mind. That night when she’s near sleep, she’s almost willing to admit that she might have a crush on him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWs for this part: forced outing, misgendering, mentions of panic attacks

The day starts out like any other day. Leslie’s at her desk early, hoping to get ahead on work since she’ll be out of the office for most of the day. They’ve got a full agenda of interviews to promote the Harvest Festival, which is only two weeks away. She’s been getting even less sleep than she normally does, and she can feel the pressure weighing heavily on her.

When Tom strolls into the office a few hours later, his excitement is enough to get her going again. Tom loves to be in front of a camera, and she knows he’s looking forward to schmoozing with Joan Callamezzo later in the afternoon. She’s telling him about her attempted call to Oprah when Ben walks in, and she flashes a grin at him.

Ben hands her a spreadsheet, and she finds herself teasing him about his fixation on numbers and precision. She can’t help it; Ben’s an easy target, and she likes the look he gets on his face when she teases him. Besides, it helps ease some of her nerves as they plan for their first interview.

“Our first interview is at 93.7FM with Crazy Ira and the Douche,” she says, and already Ben looks unimpressed. “They are Pawnee’s most hilarious drive-time radio guys,” she adds, feeling suddenly defensive. Sure, sometimes their humor is a little grating, but they really are Pawnee’s best. And the fact that they’re from Pawnee makes them better than any other radio show by default. She’s sure Ben will understand once they get there.

When they get to the studio, Ben hangs back at the end of the room while Tom and Leslie get situated. Her headphones are a little tight, and she knows she’ll have to fix her hair before she goes on Pawnee Today. Luckily, she keeps a round brush in her purse and an emergency bottle of mousse in her trunk.

They start off the segment with a couple of jokes. Leslie glances over at Ben to see if he’s laughing. He still looks unimpressed, so she smiles wider so that it looks like she’s having a great time. Crazy Ira and the Douche might not be her brand of humor, but that doesn’t mean they’re not funny. Tom seems like he’s having the time of his life, at least.

“Alright, switching gears here now,” Howard starts, “We’ve got Leslie Knope and Tom Haverfart and Ben Wyatt, and they’re in the hizzy to talk about an upcoming event called the Harvest Festival.”

Leslie hadn’t expected him to mention Ben, since he’s not technically part of this interview. She rolls with it, though, smiling widely as she responds. “Well, The Douche, it’s a Pawnee tradition.” She does her best to sell it as a fun experience, making sure to call out the corn maze.

Ira makes a crude joke, and Leslie keeps her smile pasted on. It’s sexist, and rude, and she can maybe understand why Ben isn’t impressed. She’s not willing to admit that, though, so she tries to steer the conversation back to the festival. “There’s also going to be hayrides!” she exclaims.

“‘Hey, ride me,’ is what Crazy Ira’s mom said,” Howard jokes. Leslie forces herself not to cringe at the sound effects.

“We’re also going to have over a hundred local vendors,” Leslie redirects the conversation again, “serving all of your favorite Pawnee delicacies. JJ’s Diner will be there, and—”

“Okay, thanks, Leslie,” Ira cuts her off. “But, you know, what we really want to do today is have a chat with Ben Wyatt here.”

Leslie’s head turns to look at Ben, who’s already starting to look flustered. He tries to protest, but Ira and Howard aren’t willing to take no for an answer. Threatening to spank him is all it takes to make Ben cross the room and slip on his own pair of headphones. Leslie doesn’t know what to expect. Ben was here in case they were asked questions about hard numbers, but he shouldn’t have had to say anything. She doesn’t know what’s coming, but the looks on Ira and Howard’s faces aren’t encouraging.

“So this guy, Ben Wyatt, we’re looking him up on Altavista,” Ira starts, and Leslie’s stomach drops. “And get this, at first, we can’t find anything. Guy is a ghost, no online presence whatsoever.”

“What are you a dinosaur, Ben?” Tom asks, already laughing.

“But my man China Joe, he does some digging, and suddenly another name shows up,” Ira says, dropping Ben’s old name like it’s nothing. Leslie tries to cut him off, realizing a moment too late where this is going.

“I think, who’s that, his sister? She sounds hot. But nope. It’s Ben! Now, you can’t really tell from looking at him, but it’s like a reverse drag queen situation here. Anyway, she’s from some hick town, Partridge, Minnesota, and when she’s eighteen, she’s elected mayor.”

“This really isn’t relevant—” Leslie protests, trying desperately to stop them. Ben doesn’t say anything, but she can see from his face how upset he is.

“She’s 18, becomes the mayor, and then blows the whole budget on an ice-skating rink. City goes bankrupt, and I guess she’s so embarrassed she has to change her name and assume another identity?” Howard says.

“That’s, it’s funny, really,” Ben stammers.

Leslie isn’t going to let this happen.

“That’s not what happened,” She says loudly. “We came to talk about the Harvest Festival. This interview is over.” She throws off her headphones, grabbing Tom by his tie. “Come on, we’re leaving.”

Tom splutters, but he follows after her. Despite Ira and Howard’s protests, they all leave the office.

“I’m, um, going to,” Ben stammers, gesturing towards the bathroom and ducking out before Leslie can say anything.

“Okay, what the hell just happened?” Tom asks Leslie in a quiet voice. “Ben used to be a mayor? And a lady? Did you know about this?”

“What just happened is that Ben was outed to the entire town,” Leslie snarls, crossing her arms over her chest. “His past has nothing to do with the Harvest Festival, and it was cruel for them to bring it up.”

“I’m not arguing with that,” Tom says, “But you do realize that this is what is going to dominate the news cycle, right? No one’s going to be talking about the Harvest Festival after this.”

Leslie groans, because she’d been too worked up about Ben to think about the fallout. “Crap on a spatula,” she mutters. “Okay, new plan. You’re good with the press. I need you to do damage control. You go do Perd Hapley, and make sure Ben’s name never comes up. I’ll do the paper. We need to give Ben time to—” she cuts herself off when Ben comes back out the bathroom.

“Hey,” she says in a soft voice. “You okay?”

Ben gives a half shrug, glancing back towards the door to the studio. “I’m sorry you had to cut the interview short,” he says.

“We don’t need their promotion anyway,” she says sharply, glaring at Tom when he mutters that yes, they really did need it. “Tom, take my car back to the studio. Ben and I will drive back to the office together.” She hands him her keys before he can protest, and then follows Ben out to the parking lot.

* * *

When Crazy Ira and the Douche ask him to join them, Ben relents with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He hasn’t been called his deadname since the last time he went home to Partridge for Christmas. It rattles around in his head, and he’s suddenly forgotten how to put two words together. The host follows it with a summary of Ice Town, and wow, they’re just going to lay out all of his insecurities one by one, aren’t they?

He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. Maybe he should deflect, or he should shut down the conversation, say ‘yes, I’m trans, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about today’ so that Leslie can talk about the festival. He can’t find the words.

There’s nothing he can say to fix this. Anyone who’s not bothered by the fact that he’s trans will probably be bothered that someone who bankrupted their hometown is now in charge of Pawnee’s budget. There’s no winning, no way out.

When Leslie calls off the interview and storms out, he follows her blindly. The reality of what just happened finally hits him, and he runs off to the bathroom so that he can get himself together. He’s not going to cry. He’s not going to let himself have a panic attack, either.

He closes himself in a stall and takes deep, mindful breaths like Chris taught him. He goes through his mental checklist. Five things he can see: his shoe is untied, the stall is out of toilet paper, the latch on the door doesn’t fully close, the cuff of his shirt is wrinkled, he has a papercut on his index finger. Four things he can hear: a faucet is dripping, his watch is ticking, the sound of his breathing, the lull of voices from outside the bathroom. By the time he gets to one thing he can taste—a mint from his pocket, because he is in a bathroom after all—his heart rate has steadied. He’s still shaken up, but he’s not at risk of falling apart. He’ll get through the day, somehow, and then he’ll call Steph when he’s safe in his hotel room or he’ll call his old therapist and ask if she can fit him in over the phone. He’ll be fine.

But he can’t hide in the bathroom forever. He goes to the sink, splashing water on his face and staring at his reflection for a long moment. He can do this. Maybe it’ll be bad, but he’s got Chris with him now. If there are death threats, he won’t be alone.

Leslie stops talking as soon as he steps into the hall, making it obvious that she had been talking about him. She asks him if he’s okay, and then sends Tom off to do Perd Hapley on his own.

“Didn’t you want to go on Perd’s show?” Ben asks as they walk to his car.

“Perd’s a softie,” Leslie says, climbing into his Saturn. “Tom can handle him. And besides, I have to meet with the Pawnee Journal.”

“For damage control?” Ben asks with a sigh, starting up his car. “I really am sorry about that.”

“Hey,” she says, reaching out for his arm. “Don’t. I’m really sorry that just happened. If I had any idea that they were going to do that, I never would’ve asked you to help with this.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he sighs. “It’s not the first time it’s happened, either. If I don’t try to lie low, one or the other comes out. Not usually both on the same day, but...”

“If anyone in City Hall says anything to you, you come to me, okay?” Leslie says firmly. “I won’t let it stand. You shouldn’t have to deal with any of this on your own.”

Ben’s a little touched with how much he can tell she means that. “Thanks,” he says, giving her a half-smile. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but it’s the best he can manage. “I’ll be fine. Chris is a good middleman if anyone goes too far. People know not to mess with him.”

“Good. I’m glad you have him,” Leslie says. “And it’s not just him, you know. All of your friends in Pawnee have your back.”

It’s odd to think of the Parks Department as his friends, but Ben supposes they’re the closest thing to friends that he has here. “They’ll be just as surprised as Tom was,” Ben says, remembering his expression.

“They might be surprised,” Leslie allowed, “And they might not always know how to say the right thing, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try. They care about you, Ben. We all care about you.”

Ben’s glad for the excuse of staring at the road while he drives, because he’s not sure if he could’ve met Leslie’s eyes as she said that. Today’s been the worst day he’s had in a long time, but having Leslie here with him, so firmly in his corner, makes him feel a little less alone.

“What are you going to tell the Pawnee Journal if they ask about me?” he asks.

“I’m going to try to keep the focus on the Harvest Festival, and off of you,” Leslie promises. “You didn’t ask to be in the spotlight.”

“Sure, but we both know it’ll still come up,” Ben says, glancing over at her. She sighs.

“Then I’ll say that Ben Wyatt is one of the most dedicated and responsible men in government that I know, and that the city of Pawnee is really lucky to have him,” she says, and Ben has to look away again. “Without Ben Wyatt, we wouldn’t have a Harvest Festival. We might not even have a city government.”

“I don’t know if I would go that far,” Ben says as they pull into the parking lot of City Hall.

Leslie has to run to her office, but she squeezes his arm one last time before she darts off.

When Ben gets to his office, Chris is still out. He rests his head on his desk, indulging in a rare moment of self-pity. His phone is blinking with new voicemails, and he’s sure his inbox is just as full. Before he can work up the strength to start going through emails, his office door bursts open.

“Ben! I came as soon as Leslie told me what happened,” Chris says, coming straight to his desk. “I have literally never been so disappointed in the integrity of our media.”

“I’m fine,” Ben promises, but he takes Chris up on the offer to cover his meetings for the rest of the day. His email isn’t as bad as it could be, but he still breathes a sigh of relief when he finally finishes.

“Hey,” a monotone voice comes from the door to his office. When he looks up, April is standing there, refusing to make eye contact.

“Did you want to see Chris?” he asks. “He just stepped out.”

“No,” April says with a sigh, like she’s annoyed to be there. “I just wanted to say that, you know, you’re not completely lame and I know you’re helping with the Harvest Festival and what happened was really shitty and I had gay boyfriends so I get it,” she says, all in one breath.

It takes Ben a moment to decipher that, but when he does he knows it’s her way of telling him she supports him. “Thanks April,” he says with a small smile. “I appreciate that.”

“No one likes Crazy Ira and the Douche anyway,” she tells him, and then she turns on her heel and walks out.

April isn’t the only guest he has. Before the end of the day, every member of the Parks Department comes by to see him. Tom tells him that his suit looks like garbage and hands him a garment bag. Ben tries to tell him that it's too expensive, but Tom just hands him the receipt and tells him to expense it before he walks out. Donna offers to let him take her spot the next time she tricks Andy into giving foot massages. Jerry stumbles through an awkward monologue that mentions how much he loves his daughters too many times, but it seems well-intentioned. Ron even comes by and offers to take him camping, which is completely unexpected.

Andy’s the last visitor of the day, just as Ben’s packing up his briefcase.

“Hey, Ben!” he exclaims. “Everyone told me what happened, and I wanted to come by and say that I support you.”

“Thanks, Andy,” Ben says with a tight smile, more than ready to go home.

“Yeah,” Andy nods seriously. “There’s nothing embarrassing about being into figure skating. Like, it’s basically just fancy hockey, and hockey is my third favorite sport.”

“Wait, what did you hear?”

“Well, you know. You went on Crazy Ira and the Douche, and they laughed at you because when you were a kid you spent all your money on ice skates,” Andy says. When he leans against the wall, a picture frame falls off. “Was that not what it was?”

“Close enough,” Ben grins, figuring he’ll have Leslie explain it to Andy later. “Thanks for coming by. It means a lot.”

“Anytime, dude,” Andy says, giving him a salute on his way out.

Ben reaches for his keys, laughing for the first time since this whole thing started.


	5. Chapter 5

Things get worse before they get better. Marcia Langman tries to organize a boycott of the Harvest Festival. Three sponsors pull out, and Leslie worries that it might be the beginning of the end. She keeps a bright face on, lecturing everyone in the Parks Department not to speak a word of it to Ben. He’ll find out eventually, but she wants to protect him from it as long as she can. He doesn’t say much about how all of this is affecting him, so she has to check in with Chris to make sure that he’s okay. Leslie might not know what he’s going through, but she knows that she won’t let him go through it alone.

A week before the festival, things start to turn around. She gets a call from a local affiliate with the Trevor Project, asking if they can put up a booth on LGBTQ suicide prevention at the Harvest Festival. Then the Society for Family Stability Foundation gets distracted by a scandal at the high school—the school nurse kept a bowl of condoms for the students in her office—which redirects their focus from Ben. They don’t lose any more sponsors. A few days later, she finds out that she and Ron are getting a commendation from the Indiana Statehouse for bringing back the Harvest Festival. She’s ecstatic; both for the prestige of the award and for the relief that the spotlight is finally shifting off of Ben. He deserves a break.

She pushes Tom into inviting Ben out while she’s in Indianapolis. Ben always seems more relaxed when he’s hanging out in the Parks Department, but for some reason he never goes out with them. She doesn’t like to think about him sitting in his motel all by himself. She knows that deep down, Tom feels the same way.

Indianapolis is a disaster. Ron’s devastated about his favorite steakhouse being shut down, but even worse is the realization that Chris is a filthy cheater. She’s livid for Ann’s sake. She gets even more angry when she starts to wonder if Ben knew. Were they in on it? Did Chris and Ben just go from town to town, making people fall in love with them and then stomping on their hearts? Not that Leslie’s in love with Ben. Of course she’s not. She’d just thought that they were friends, but how could she be friends with someone who helped break her best friend’s heart?

Except, Chris isn’t cheating on Ann. Ann’s embarrassed and upset, and Leslie doesn’t think twice before leaving Ron on his own and driving her back to Pawnee. No one should be alone after a break up. Especially not someone as beautiful as Ann, and especially not after a breakup that took a week to find out about. When she mentions the launch party at the Snakehole, Ann’s more than willing to drink her feelings away.

If part of her motivation is the chance of running into Ben, well, who can blame her?

* * *

Ben’s surprised when Tom comes by his office to invite him out. He’d been in the room when Tom had announced the party, of course, but he didn’t have any real reason to go. The people in the Parks Department are all nice to him, but he knows they don’t really want him going out with them. He’s been in a funk since Crazy Ira and the Douche. He doesn’t want to bring everyone else down with him.

Besides, he already knows that Leslie won’t be there because of her commendation in Indianapolis. Not that he would’ve gone if she were going to be there, but… Well, he probably would have, actually. They’ve been so busy with the Harvest Festival that they haven’t spent much time together lately, and he misses her company.

It feels like there’s something going on between them. He analyzes everything, trying to determine if he’s seeing something that isn’t there. She smiles warmly every time she sees him, but Ben can’t be sure that it’s not just because she feels bad about what happened. She brings her lunch to his office one day, and they work together. They both have a lot to get done, so there’s no time for small talk. Even still, every time he glances up, she meets his eyes with a soft smile. There’s even a little sticker on the bottom of the window pane on the door to her office. It has a pride flag and the words ‘safe space’ in all caps, and it wasn’t there before last week. It all leaves him with a bright, hopeful feeling in his chest.

Tom is insistent that Ben goes out with them, and Ben’s not going to tell him no a second time. He considers changing before he leaves, but everyone’s already seen this shirt anyway. Tom’s probably just going to poke fun at whatever else he picks out. And again, he thinks, it’s not like Leslie’s going to be there.

It turns out that Tom’s trying to pitch the worst cologne Ben has ever smelled to the weirdest fragrance maker he’s ever met. Actually, the only fragrance maker Ben’s ever met, but the point still stands. Tom’s plot crashes and burns, but it feels like a bonding experience. Maybe Tom only invited him out because of pity, but by the end of the night it feels like they’re friends. For the first time since Crazy Ira and the Douche, he’s in public without hearing a single insult. He and Tom are getting along. Donna knows what beer he drinks. It turns out that he didn’t need Leslie around to have a good time.

It figures that he would finally start to enjoy living in Pawnee right before he has to leave.

He glances across the lounge and sees Leslie and Ann sitting at the bar. The beers have loosened him up, and he doesn’t overthink it before he walks over to their side.

“How’s it going?” he asks as they finish their first shot.

“Hey!” Leslie exclaims, and Ben’s heart skips at how excited she sounds to see him. “Look who’s socializing!”

“Yeah, and I’m having a good time,” he says, a little surprised that it’s true. He can’t remember the last time he went out with anyone other than just Chris.

“I’m gonna pee,” Ann says after she finishes her next drink, getting up and heading to the back. Apparently she hadn’t realized that Chris broke up with her, and now she’s miserable. Ben knows how this goes, and he expects Leslie to follow after her to the bathroom. Leslie glances at Ann, looking torn for a moment, but she doesn’t get up.

“I’m glad you came out,” she tells Ben. “We’ve all been working so hard on this festival. We deserved a break.”

“Yeah, we did,” Ben agrees, smiling at her. “Some of us more than others. I know how much you’ve done to keep the festival afloat after I made us lose sponsors.”

“You didn’t make us lose sponsors,” Leslie frowns. “That jerkface Marcia made us lose sponsors. Did you know she tried to get me to resign after the penguin incident?”

“How did that whole thing end, anyway?” Ben asks, because he’s never heard the full story.

“It doesn’t matter,” Leslie says with a sigh. “What matters is that Marcia doesn’t speak for everyone in Pawnee. Look at all these people around you, Ben. They’re all your friends.”

“All of them?” Ben says with a grin, needing to joke to deflect how intently she’s looking into his eyes. “Even that guy?”

“Yes, even that guy,” Leslie says, and then glances to see who he’s talking about. “Oh, okay, maybe not that guy,” she admits, taking in the man grinning creepily at girls that are much too young for him.

They’re both laughing when Ann gets back.

* * *

His time in Pawnee is nearing to a close. It looms over him as they reach the first day of the Harvest Festival. He’s never been sad to leave a town before. He’s never left friends behind, though. Facebook acquaintances, sure, but no other town has given him the community he’s found in Pawnee.

No other town has had Leslie Knope.

She’s a blur the day before the festival starts. She surprises the Parks Department with a pony—sorry, no, a mini horse—and everyone loses their goddamn minds. Ben really doesn’t get it. Sure, there’s something objectively cute about a smaller version of a horse, but what makes this one in particular so special? Trying to ask just gets him yelled at, so he learns to keep his mouth shut.

At first, the festival starts off without a hitch. When he gets to the fairgrounds for the first time, he’s stunned. He’d been a part of the planning, but even still, seeing it all put together is impressive. Leslie was right. Providing a service feels a lot better than cutting things.

Li'l Sebastian and Aunt Tilda are the main attractions, but it’s something smaller that turns Ben’s head. There’s a table in the staff tent where Leslie’s put out everyone’s badges. When Ben goes to pick up his, he notices that underneath each person’s name are their pronouns. It’s such a little touch. It was probably just an afterthought. It still makes Ben’s heart clench. How on Earth is he supposed to leave Pawnee?

Joan Callamezzo is coming by to do a story about Harvest Fest, and Leslie tells Ben that he doesn’t need to be there for it. He knows she might have questions for him. He hides out in a tent until it looks like the interview is over, and then he goes to check on Leslie.

“That went well!” Leslie exclaims.

There’s a piece of cotton candy stuck to her lip. Ben makes a joke instead of thinking about how much he’d like to kiss it off.

“Take that curse,” he grins, reaching out to do their secret handshake. Joan Callamezzo is still in earshot, and just like that, Ben manages to ruin things again. Tom runs up and mentions losing Li’l Sebastian, and everything spirals out of control from there. Leslie is frantic as things escalate, and Ben feels useless. He’s still too scared to handle the press, so he ducks to the side when Leslie holds her press conference.

“First Ice Town and now this,” a reporter starts. “Bad luck seems to follow Ben Wyatt around. Care to comment?”

Ben walks away before he can hear Leslie’s answer. He tries to focus on the positive: they had used his real name, at least. That’s something. The comment gets stuck in his head until he’s convinced himself that the reporter is right. Everything he touches falls apart. He keeps distracting attention from Leslie and her work. He’s tired of everything being about his past. Maybe if he just disappears, the curse will be lifted and everything will be okay. Maybe this is a sign he’s supposed to leave Pawnee.

He runs off before Leslie can stop him. When he’s back in his motel that night, he thinks about Leslie. She’s probably still at the festival. She’s probably single handedly fixing this entire crisis. That’s when the guilt hits him. Maybe he’s right, and he’s cursed. But maybe he’s not, and maybe he just abandoned Leslie to clean up the mess he made. It’s the same thing he’d done after Crazy Ira and the Douche. She deserves more than that.

When Ben leaves his motel room the next morning, he decides that he’s done letting other people fight his battles for him. He’s done hiding from his problems. He’s let Leslie deal with the fallout alone for too long. It’s time for him to stand up for himself. Besides, he’s leaving Pawnee in a few days. What’s the worst that can happen?

Leslie’s set up some sort of ceremony with Ken Hotate, but it hasn’t started yet when he arrives at the festival. He walks straight into the mass of reporters, ignoring the pounding in his chest. Joan sticks her microphone in Ben’s face as soon as she notices him.

“Ben Wyatt! You’ve been a recluse ever since Crazy Ira revealed your dark past—,” she begins, but Ben doesn’t let her get further than that.

“Okay, you know what?” he snaps, crossing his arms over his chest. “This shouldn’t be news. Statistically, I’m not the first trans person to live in Pawnee. I won’t be the last. Frankly, I don’t care what you think about that. The only thing that matters is that I’m good at my job. I helped Pawnee mitigate its financial crisis, just like I’ve helped dozens of other towns. And yeah, I screwed up when I was eighteen, but who doesn’t do dumb stuff when they’re eighteen?”

“I stole my gym teacher’s husband,” Joan replies in a meek voice. Huh. He wasn’t expecting that, but he can work with it.

“So there you go,” Ben nods. “This festival, thanks to the tireless efforts of Leslie Knope, is going to bring people nothing but happiness. That’s your story.”

The ceremony starts, and the reporters stop focusing on him. His heart is still racing, but he’s proud of himself. He feels all of the tension he’s been carrying since Crazy Ira and the Douche slowly fade away. The Harvest Festival begins, and Ben hopes that it’s everything that Leslie dreamed it would be.

“Hey, look who’s back,” Leslie says with a smile when he goes up to her. There’s no hint of resentment at him for running off, just pure joy to have him back again.

“I’m sorry I left,” Ben tells her.

“I heard about your interview,” Leslie says softly. “How did that feel?”

“Terrifying,” Ben admits, rubbing his neck. “But also freeing, I think. I’ve never had my whole life out in the open before. I think I’m going to try embracing it.”

“I’m so happy for you,” she beams at him.

“I’m happy for you too,” Ben says, gesturing to the festival around them. “You did it, Leslie. This is all happening because of you.”

“Ben, this project is as much yours as it is mine. It’s ours. It’s gonna be really great, and I’m glad you’re here,” she says, and wraps him in a hug.

Ben wonders if it’s the last time he’ll get to hold her before he has to leave Pawnee.


	6. Chapter 6

The Harvest Festival is some of Leslie’s best work. Sure, there are some bumps along the way, but she’s never been happier than she feels watching everyone on opening day. It’s all over far too quickly.

Ben comes to her office early in the morning the day after everything wraps up.

“Oh, hey,” she exclaims, grinning up at him. “Did we have a meeting scheduled?”

“No, no meeting,” he says, giving her a small smile. “I actually, uh. I wanted to give you something.”

“Is it waffles?” she exclaims hopefully, trying to get a glance of what he’s hiding behind his back. She’s already eaten breakfast, but she always has room for waffles.

“Better than waffles,” Ben says, and then quickly shakes his head. “Okay, maybe I shouldn’t get your hopes up. It’s, uh, well. Here,” he says awkwardly, shoving it into her hands.

He’s framed the front page of the Pawnee Journal. _HARVEST BEST-IVAL_ , reads the headline, because Shauna had finally taken one of her headline suggestions.

“Oh,” Leslie says, looking up at Ben.

“I thought you should have something to remember it by,” Ben says with a little half shrug.

“I love it,” she tells him, hugging it to her chest. “It’s perfect. I’m going to put it right here so that I can look at it every day.” She props it up on the shelf behind her desk, grinning over at him.

“I’m glad you like it,” Ben smiles. “Do you want to grab lunch today?”

“I’d love to,” Leslie grins. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten about you. I’ve got a going away present for you in my car.”

She might be imagining it, but it seems like his face falls a little when she says that.

“Oh, right,” he says with a quick nod. “I’ll just, I’ll see you then.” He hurries out of her office, and Leslie makes a mental note to talk to Ann about how weird he’s being.

Then Paul has a heart attack, and they spend the rest of the day dealing with the fall out from that crisis. She eats a NutriYum bar for lunch while she’s walking down the hall, and she doesn’t remember that she’d missed lunch with Ben until a few days later. By then, Chris has arrived to take over as City Manager. She’s focused on coming up with a great new idea, so she doesn’t have time to figure out what’s going on with Ben.

But he comes camping with them, and he calls her the Energizer Bunny of City Government. It’s an odd compliment, but it’s still one of the best that he’s given her. It’s not quite as nerdy as when he’d told her that she was ‘like a ninja crossed with a Jedi,’ but it’s up there. And wow, when did she start mentally cataloguing all the compliments Ben’s given her?

A few days later, she runs into him in the hallway after Andy and April invite everyone to their dinner party.

“I wanted your advice on something,” he tells her as they walk down the hall. “My boss in Indianapolis wants me back on the road in a week. But then this morning, Chris offered me a job to stay here in Pawnee and work for him.”

Leslie’s brain stops working for a moment.

“Do you want to do that?” she asks him, keeping her face completely blank.

“Well, I don’t know,” Ben says. “I’ve been moving around so much the past few years, it might be nice to stay in one place for a while. What do you think?”

Leslie really doesn’t know what she thinks. She’s known since day one that Ben was only here temporarily. That was a good thing, at first. When she’d come home from a budget meeting fuming, she could at least remind herself that Mean Ben would be out of their lives eventually. Then the Harvest Festival had taken over her life for a few months, and she hadn’t had time to think about Ben leaving.

Why is thinking of him leaving so scary?

“Well, this is a great city. You know, it’s definitely the best city in Indiana, probably America, possibly the world,” she tells him, and she hates how adorable he looks when he agrees with her. “But on the other hand,” she adds quickly, “You’ve put in twelve years with the State Government…”

 _Stay_ , something deep in her gut tells her. She’s a little surprised by how strongly she wants that. But she can’t tell him to stay. Staying in Pawnee would be crazy. He’s got a great job, and even if he hasn’t admitted it, she knows he still has political aspirations. He’ll be closer to reaching that dream with a job for the State.

Beyond that, Pawnee hasn’t been exactly kind to him. Leslie loves this town with all of her heart, but she can’t ignore how horrible the first few days after Crazy Ira and the Douche were for Ben. He’s a private person, she knows, and if he stays in Pawnee that part of his life will always be out in the open. Is that something he can ignore?

She knows that if she tells him to stay, she’d just be doing it for selfish reasons. She can’t ask him to give up his entire life just for the chance that maybe there might be something between them. They’ve never kissed. They’ve never even been on a date. Although, they’ve had quite a few dinners together at JJ’s. Working dinners, she reminds herself.

“It’s a tough call. You know what I would do? You should make a pros and cons list,” she tells him, and then awkwardly shakes his hand before she rushes away. They have to be rational about this. Ben needs to look at the situation from all sides and make the best decision once he’s analyzed all the angles. He’s a numbers robot, after all. He shouldn’t be asking her about this in the first place.

What does it mean, that he’d wanted her opinion on whether he should stay? And what does it mean that her opinion feels so strong?

She tries to forget about the entire conversation. She buries her head in work and spends an hour getting everything April and Andy asked her to bring to their party. When Tom asks Ben about leaving during the party, she finds an excuse to run off. She can’t think about this right now. She needs a distraction.

She finds a distraction in the kitchen. Apparently this party is a wedding, and Andy and April are about to throw away their futures after only a month of dating. She has to stop this. They haven’t planned out anything. They’re jumping into all of this without thinking about any of the repercussions. They don’t have a place to live. They don’t even know each other’s middle names! She tries to remember if she knows Ben’s middle name, but then shakes her head. Not important. She has bigger priorities now.

She tries telling Ben about it, but he gets distracted about whether or not he should change his Brita filter. Then Andy is standing on a chair and telling everyone about the ceremony, and it’s too late. Her heart is racing and she feels like she might pass out or be sick. This can’t be happening. April and Andy can’t be getting married. They’re too young, and there’s no way this isn’t a mistake.

Except.

Except, the ceremony is actually kind of sweet. They’re both so young, but Leslie can see the tears in Andy’s eyes as April walks down the makeshift aisle. A different side of April comes out when she’s with Andy, and Leslie feels herself getting a little emotional when they say their vows. She doesn’t stop the wedding, and afterwards while everyone’s dancing she goes out on the porch to think.

How can they be so sure? How can two people decide to just step off a cliff and hope for the best? What’s it like to trust someone that much?

Ron comes out to the porch with two glasses of wine, and he tells her that there was nothing she could have done to stop it. “When you find somebody you like, you roll the dice,” he says, and her thoughts immediately go to Ben.

Can she really do this? Can she ask Ben to roll the dice? She mulls on it for a while, throughout the rest of the speeches. Andy gets up, and he says that life is short. “I really think you should just do whatever makes you happy. That’s what April and I did.”

Ben makes her happy. Ben staying in Pawnee would make her happy. Maybe another glass of wine will help her work up the courage to tell him that.

In the end, he comes to her. He says hey with a little grin and takes a sip of his beer, and the words come tumbling out before she can overthink them.

“You should stay,” she tells him. “Don’t go back to Indianapolis. You should stay here.” He’s grinning at her, and her stomach twists in that familiar way. “It’s a great city here, you know? And there are great people, and you’ve made a lot of friends. You’re… You learned to embrace living openly here, right?”

“Yeah,” Ben says with a nod, still smiling at her.

“And what are you going to do? Go back to your old job and hack up people’s budgets? Stay here,” she says, but she’s thinking stay with me. “Help us build something.”

“I already accepted the job,” he cuts her off. “I’m staying here.”

She wants to hug him, or maybe finally ask him on a real date, but then she notices Orin in the corner of her eye. She grabs Ben’s arm and they run away, laughing loudly. Ben’s here to stay, and she’s not sure if she’s feeling tipsy from the wine or the way he makes her feel.

* * *

Ben takes the job. It’s impulsive. It’s not just a divergence from his five year plan, it’s throwing the whole plan out the window. But he knows from the moment that Chris offers it to him that it’s what he has to do. He’s been miserable every time he thinks about leaving for the past few weeks. He’d even found himself looking at job listings online in a few rougher moments, wondering what Leslie would think if he quit his job to work at an accounting firm in Pawnee. Chris offering him the job is the perfect opportunity at perfect timing.

In the back of his head, he remembers Chris’ thoughts on office relationships. It had come up for the first time while they were auditing in Evansville. Their City Clerk had been in a relationship with a City Council member, and the entire thing had led to corruption and mismanagement of funds. They’d spent weeks untangling the whole mess, and Chris had gone on multiple rants on how unprofessional the entire situation was.

This is different, he convinces himself. Chris is Ben’s best friend, and he knows that Ben hasn’t had much luck in dating over the past few years. There had been a few dates in Ferndale, a one night stand in Arcadia, and not much else. Indiana isn’t all that progressive, and it usually takes Ben a while to feel comfortable enough to come out to potential love interests. But Leslie? Leslie’s special. He’s trusted her since day one, even when she was scrunching up her face and calling him a jerk. Ben hasn’t felt like this in… Maybe he’s never felt like this before.

So Chris has to understand, he thinks. He’ll just tell him that he can be professional about this, and Chris will agree. Then he’ll go straight to the Parks Department and ask Leslie out, and they’ll finally get to see where this thing goes.

Ben’s feeling confident as he comes into the office. He’s brought Chris a green smoothie from his favorite health food place. It’s not a bribe, exactly, but he figures it’ll put Chris in a good mood.

“Got you something,” he says, handing it over with a grin. “And I asked for an extra wheatgrass shot.”

“Ben!” Chris exclaims, taking a large sip. “Thank you so much! There is literally no better way to start the day than with a delicious, healthy smoothie. Did you get yourself one as well?”

“I drank it in the car,” Ben lies, heading over to his desk. They work in silence for a while, and then Ben puts down his pen. “So,” he starts, trying to seem casual. “I’ve been thinking... Now that I’m in Pawnee to stay, maybe I’ll try dating again.”

“Oh!” Chris grins over at him. “Who’s the lucky lady?”

Ben chews on his lip for a moment. Should he just go out and say it’s Leslie? No, he figures. He should try to warm Chris up to it first.

“Well,” he says. “That’s the thing. It’s, um. Someone in City Government.”

Chris isn’t smiling anymore. “Ben, you know that I have a very strict policy on office relationships. Our salaries come from the taxpayers, and we have a duty to avoid corruption.”

“I know that,” Ben says. His stomach sinks. “But I thought that maybe—”

“I’m sorry, Ben,” Chris says firmly. “But you oversee every department, which means that if you socialized with someone from the government, you’d be their supervisor. Do you understand why I can’t allow that?”

“Of course I understand,” Ben nods, dropping his gaze back to his desk. “It wasn’t—it was just a passing thought. Nothing important.”

“How about this,” Chris says, smiling again. “I’ll set you up with someone! It’ll be fun!”

Great. Now Ben can’t date Leslie, and he’ll have to go on an awkward blind date with whoever Chris picks. He just hopes that he’ll get lucky, and Chris will forget that this conversation ever happened.

Ben tries to avoid Leslie at first. Now that he knows that nothing can happen between them, he figures he should try to give them some distance. He needs to enjoy being her friend and forget about the way his heart skips a beat whenever she teases him. But City Hall isn’t that big, and avoiding her is difficult when seeing her is the best part of his day. He even finds himself going to a museum dedicated to snow globes just so that he has an excuse to talk about it with her.

He thinks things can’t get worse, and then he witnesses Joe from the Sewage Department crassly asking Leslie out. Propositioning her, really, and Ben might need to mention to someone that they’ll have a sexual harassment case on their hands if they don’t deal with him soon. He knows that Leslie isn’t going to take Joe up on his offer, obviously, but it makes Ben realize something. He can’t date Leslie, but someone else can. What is he going to do if someone walks into Leslie’s life and asks her out? How is he supposed to just stand by and watch her fall in love with someone else? The thought makes his stomach churn.

“So I had some ideas for the health initiative,” Leslie tells him as they’re leaving a meeting. Now that he’s accepted that avoiding her is pointless, he’s not going to pass on a chance to spend time with her.

“How about I swing by later and we’ll just, you know, maybe go over everything?” he asks. He’s sure she’ll bring a minimum of five color coded binders full of ideas. He’s also sure that at some point during their meeting, they’ll go off topic and find themselves talking about History Channel documentaries or he’ll try to explain the plot of Game of Thrones to her again.

“Or we could go out after work? You know, go to JJ’s or something, grab a bite?” she asks, stepping closer to him in the hall.

Fuck, he realizes, she’s asking him out. He’s completely flustered. He’d known that he was interested in her, and he’d had a feeling that she was too. It’s not surprising that she’s the type of woman to make the first move. He wants nothing more than to say yes. But Chris was clear. It can’t happen. Ice Town was enough scandal for one lifetime. He can’t risk his job, and Leslie loves her job more than anything else. She’d never be willing to put it in jeopardy.

He knows what he has to do. That doesn’t make it any easier.

“Um, I–I don’t think I can,” he stammers. He knows he looks every bit as awkward as he feels. “But why don’t we just talk about it later in this building?” He can see the disappointment in her face, and he hates that she’s feeling rejected. He stammers out a few compliments, hoping she’ll read through them and realize how much he doesn’t want to say no.

Then he turns around and walks into someone else’s office, and awkwardly tries to come up with an excuse for interrupting the head of transit.

He thinks about his conversation with Leslie all day. He lets himself imagine what could have happened if he’d said yes. He’s been to dinner with her at JJ’s before, of course, but maybe this time instead of splitting the bill and going their separate ways, she’d invite him back to her place. Maybe he’d kiss her goodnight on the porch, or maybe she’d invite him inside. They could make out on the couch, and he’d slip a hand up her shirt... He can’t let himself think about that at work, but he knows the fantasy will come back when he’s alone in his motel room.

Things get weird later in the afternoon. He’s running a meeting with the Parks Department to go over the health initiative, and then Tom takes over the meeting. He says that he and Leslie have a ‘deep, spiritual connection,’ and Leslie looks uncomfortable.

“Everything is great, Ben,” Tom says, sliding his hand over Leslie’s. “Leslie and I just had something magical happen today.”

Okay, what is it with Leslie getting hit on in front of Ben today? Ben really isn’t sure what he did to deserve this. He’s not sure what Leslie did either, since she looks just as unhappy with Tom as she did with Joe earlier. Tom gets even more blatant with his flirting, and then Leslie is storming out and dragging Tom with her.

It’s clear that everyone in the conference room wants to eavesdrop on whatever it is that’s happening in the hall. Ben’s just as curious as the rest of them, but he figures Leslie deserves her privacy. “Okay, so let’s talk about this pedometer idea,” he says, and forces everyone to get back to work. Later, Tom comes back into the room, but Leslie’s not with him. Ben forces himself to be professional, but as the meeting ends he can’t resist asking Tom what’s going on.

Tom tells him that it was all a joke, and Ben feels himself relax. He hadn’t really thought there was anything going on between Leslie and Tom, but still, it’s nice to hear. He’s not sure if it’s nice to hear that Leslie’s a good kisser. He’s wondered, of course. She’s good at everything she does, so it’s no surprise she’d be good at that too. But he really doesn’t want to think about Leslie kissing Tom or anyone else, so he pushes past Tom and tries to ignore everything he’s saying about Leslie’s mouth.

Leslie comes over to him when they’re all in the courtyard eating Chris and Ron’s burgers. The hurt that had been in her eyes the last time they’d talked is gone, and she asks if he wants to go talk about her ideas. They can’t leave the building, of course, but Ben figures that doesn’t mean they have to talk at their desks. They eat together on a bench on the second floor by one of the only non-gruesome murals in City Hall. It’s quickly become one of his favorite lunch spots in City Hall, but he thinks he likes it even more now that he’s sharing it with Leslie.

There’s a respectful distance between them, and this is nothing more than a friendly lunch between colleagues. But her nose scrunches up when she laughs, and he smiles every time he remembers that she’d asked him out. This isn’t a date, but that’s only because they can’t date. He knows that she likes him. Maybe that can be enough for now.


	7. Chapter 7

It takes him a few days to realize what’s going on. In all of his years on the road, going from one crappy motel to the next, he’s somehow managed to avoid this particular evil.

The first day that he wakes up with a few red marks near his belly button, he convinces himself that there must have been a mosquito in his room last night. He hadn’t heard one, but there are only three bites. That can’t mean anything else, right?

The next day, he’s completely covered. He pulls his mattress up from the frame and sees the tell tale spots on the edges of the mattress. His entire body shudders. He has to get out of there, now.

He throws all of his clothes into a dryer at a laundromat, using the highest setting to kill any bed bugs hitching a ride. He throws out his briefcase, not willing to risk it. He feels sleep deprived and paranoid, constantly feeling phantom itches up his back. Bed bugs are hell.

When Leslie sneaks up on him in his office later, he’s so flustered that he bangs his head on a cabinet. She tells him about an art show that she organized, and if he weren’t so preoccupied with finding a new place to live, he might consider going to support her. She’s clearly proud of the work she’s put into organizing it, and if it’s like any of her other projects it’s sure to be a success. He tries to tell her that and finds himself stumbling over his words. There’s just something about Leslie Knope that keeps him flustered and awkward, but she grins at him like she finds it charming.

“Leslie Knope! Ben Wyatt!” Chris exclaims as he comes into the room, interrupting whatever tension there might have been between the two of them. “Ben, great news. Do you remember the woman I told you about from the County Commissioners Office?”

“Um, vaguely,” Ben says, wracking his brain to try to remember the conversation.

“Sure you do. Cindy Miller,” Chris says. “Anyway, she’s agreed to go on a date with you.”

That rings a bell. Ben has been trying to stop Chris from setting him up on blind dates ever since their awkward conversation about interoffice dating. He’d managed to evade the last few dates, but now Chris is looking like he won’t take no for an answer. To make matters worse, he’s doing this in front of Leslie, who looks just as uncomfortable as Ben feels. And did the woman’s name really need to be Cindy?

“Oh,” Ben says with a frown. “You asked her out for me?”

Chris begins to wax poetic about how perfect this woman is, and Ben wishes that he could leave the room. He glances over at Leslie quickly, wondering what she’s thinking of all of this.

“I thought you had a rule,” she says, frowning at Chris, “About inter-government relationships.” Ben lets out a relieved breath. Leslie has a point, and maybe that will be enough to get Chris to back down. Ben really doesn’t want to go on an awkward blind date.

Chris assures her that there’s no conflict of interest involved, and then before Ben can stop him, he dials Cindy’s number. He puts her on speaker, and Ben suffers through one of the most awkward phone calls of his life. Leslie slips out after a moment, and Ben’s heart sinks as he watches her leave. He and Cindy decide on a restaurant, and plan to meet each other there tomorrow night. Chris looks ecstatic.

Ben doesn’t have much time to worry about the date, though, because his top priority is still finding a new place to live. He’s already got all of his stuff packed in his car, and there’s no way he’s going back to the Pawnee Super Suites tonight. He’ll sleep in his car if he has to, but he really hopes he doesn’t have to.

Tom points him in the direction of April and Andy, who apparently have an opening in their spare room. April is a little intense, but Andy seems enthused about the possibility of rooming together. Ben’s been to their place before at their wedding, and it was nice enough. He hadn’t seen the bedrooms, obviously, but anything will be a step up from his motel room. Andy offers to let him move in that night, which is perfect for Ben. He’ll miss Leslie’s art show, but at least he’ll be able to sleep without itching.

It turns out that April and Andy’s house isn’t exactly a step up from the Pawnee Super Suites. The place is a disaster when he stops by. There’s trash littered all over the floors, no real furniture, and more empty beer bottles than he can count. There’s a bag full of moldy sandwiches, and the dishwasher is inexplicably full of wet clothes. Ben’s not sure what he’s gotten himself into. It’s worse than some of the frat houses he’d been to in college, and that’s saying something.

He sleeps on the floor in his new room, and puts on headphones when April and Andy start having incredibly loud sex in the living room. It should probably bother him more than it does, but back at his motel he was used to hearing sex noises coming from the rooms on all sides of his. Just hearing one couple feels like an improvement.

He decides that Andy and April need a push in the right direction. They’re young, and they just need to figure out how to be a little more responsible. He thinks back to where he was April’s age. At twenty one he’d only been two years into his transition. Sure, his college apartment had never been this bad, but he’d broken the receiver of their landline once after his dad had refused to call him Ben throughout an entire conversation. He’d drunk too much when things got hard, and he’d been so, so angry. He’d been so young. That memory gives him the resolve to try to help Andy and April. Maybe if he’d had someone older to guide him, those first few years after Partridge wouldn’t have been so hard.

April doesn’t seem to want his help, but Andy’s motivated enough for the both of them. Ben starts by helping them clean up. He teaches them how to sort recyclables from garbage, and finds out that they’ve been using bubble bath to wash their clothes. He helps defrost the pile of bills that Andy’s stacked in the freezer, and ends up taking them to the bank for the first time in their lives.

Honestly, it’s a miracle that they’ve made it this far in life without him. Where are their parents? He was pretty sure some family members had spoken at their wedding, so there’s really no excuse for them to be this helpless. He makes them a long list of things to buy so that they can stop eating off of frisbees, and gets ready to go on his date with Cindy Eckert.

No, Cindy Miller. God, why did her name have to be Cindy? He’s already sure he’s going to embarrass himself.

He doesn’t put too much effort into his appearance. This date is just to placate Chris, and he already knows there won’t be a second date. Cindy probably doesn’t even know that he’s trans, and that’s not a conversation Ben really wants to have over a plate of overpriced pasta. He wonders if the place will have calzones. That might be enough to make the night worth it.

He’s already well into a glass of wine when Cindy arrives. She’s wearing a nice dress, and Ben feels a little too casual in his plaid button up.

“Hey,” he says with an awkward smile as she sits down. “Thanks for agreeing to this. I know Chris can come on a little strong.”

“He sure can,” she smiles, waving down the waitress to order her own glass of wine. “But he’s told me so much about you that I felt like I had to come.”

“Oh?” Ben asks, glancing down at his menu. They don’t have calzones. All Chris has told Ben about Cindy is her job and that she’s pretty, so Ben isn’t sure what she’s heard.

“He said that you’ve been best friends for years,” Cindy tells him with a smile.

“That’s true,” Ben agrees, loosening up a little. He’s not expecting sparks to fly over dinner, but there’s no reason he can’t try to enjoy himself. “We’ve been on the road together for a while now. It figured that we’d end up settling down in the same place.”

“To be honest, I was surprised you decided to stay here,” Cindy says, “After Crazy Ira and all.”

So she knows he’s trans. That’s one question answered. Ben’s still not very used to talking about himself so openly, but he figures he’ll do his best.

“It was a rough moment,” he nods, taking a sip of wine. “But I decided it’s nice to have it all out in the open. And Pawnee really started to grow on me.”

“I’m bi,” Cindy says a bit too quickly, and Ben just stares at her for a moment. Is she trying to relate to him, even the playing field a little so he’s not so exposed? Or is she implying that the only reason she’s on a date with him is because she’s bi, and she doesn’t really see him as a man? He can’t be sure.

“I haven’t met too many other queer people in Pawnee,” Ben says, trying not to read into her comment. “I’ve been to The Bulge once, but that’s about it.”

“I’ve never been on a date with a—with someone like you before,” Cindy says, and Ben’s stomach sinks. This isn’t off to a great start. “But when Chris offered, I thought, well, why not?”

“I was thinking of getting the risotto,” Ben says, looking down at his menu. The sooner they order, the sooner he can go home and tell Chris that Cindy’s a lovely woman, but they just didn’t click.

They don’t have dessert. Ben walks Cindy to her car, pats her arm awkwardly, and they go their separate ways. She was nice enough, really, and Ben knows her comments were just because she didn’t know any better. But it was awkward, and he doesn’t want to wade through all of the awkward moments until things finally get easier. He wants someone who’s already easy to be around.

He’s interrupted from his moping by a loud, frantic banging on the front door. From what he’s learned about them so far, he wouldn’t be surprised if Andy and April lost their key. Actually, he’d really expect them to just have broken a window in that case.

It’s Leslie. She’s got a headband that looks like a braid in her hair, and she’s holding a huge painting. She looks completely surprised to see him.

“I was at a meeting around the corner, and some people wanted to destroy this painting, so I brought it here. Where are Andy and April?” She asks, looking over his shoulder.

“They’re out shopping,” Ben says awkwardly. He’s still in his head from his date, and he really hadn’t expected to see her tonight.

“What are you doing here?” she asks him bluntly, and he realizes that she doesn’t know that he lives here now too. He explains that he’s moved in, and lets her into the house with her huge painting. She leans it against the wall so that he can’t see what it is, and he asks her why they want to destroy it. It must be special, whatever it is, if she’s willing to steal it and hide it in April and Andy’s house. Maybe some sort of tribute to Li’l Sebastian?

“Well, it’s a painting of me as a centaur,” she says, and that really doesn’t explain anything. “And it’s a nude,” she adds a beat later. Ben shoves his hands into his pockets, looking everywhere but at her.

“You don’t have to look at it if you don’t want to,” Leslie says with a grin, and then she gets a phone call from Chris. Ben can tell how heated he must be from Leslie’s replies, and it gives him the perfect opportunity to cross the room towards the painting.

He really shouldn’t look. If she had wanted him to see it, she would’ve turned the painting the other way, right? But, he thinks as he pretends to look at something on the wall near the painting, it was hung at the art show, wasn’t it? If he’d been able to go the night before, he would have seen it for himself. It’s not a complete breach of privacy to glance at it now.

He glances down at it quickly, walking away before Leslie can notice. And then he walks right back to the wall and glances at it again, because one look really wasn’t enough.

She looks powerful and vibrant, like she can achieve anything she puts her mind to. He can understand why Leslie loves the painting so much, why she’d risk Chris’ ire to save it from destruction. It’s a really beautiful painting.

And also, Leslie is very, very hot. He’s going to be thinking about that painting tonight, with two fingers on either side of his clit as he—

Leslie gets off the phone, interrupting that train of thought. “Ben,” she asks, walking over to his side. “You’re a level-headed person. What do I do here?”

He knows he has to tell her not to offend people, but he hates how disappointed she looks when he does. She sighs, nodding glumly.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she says. “I just… I’m so annoyed by all these rules lately.”

“Me too,” he says instantly. It’s the first time they’ve acknowledged this thing between them, and it feels good to get it in the open. Before he can say anything else, Andy and April are barging in. They both look at the painting, and they both tell Leslie that they ‘would totally hit that.’ Ben gets one last glance at the painting before Leslie takes it away to be destroyed.

Honestly, it would’ve been nice if they’d hidden the painting for Leslie. Maybe he could’ve even hidden it in his room.

Andy pelts him with marshmallows, but afterwards Ben vacuums them up while Andy and April put away their new dish set. That night, Ben even gets to take a shower with a real shower curtain hung on real hooks, instead of the tarp and hanger situation they’d been using before.

“What’s going on with you and Leslie?” Andy asks the next day, while he’s eating cereal at the shoe shine stand.

Ben protests at first, but then he finds himself spilling the truth. “I think we like each other,” he says quietly, glancing down the hall to make sure it’s empty. “But Chris has this very strict rule coworkers can’t date, so it’s not even an option.” There’s the same sting he always feels whenever he thinks about that, but it’s still nice to finally be able to talk to someone about it. Chris is his best friend, but since he’s the cause of the issue Ben can’t exactly talk to him about it. He’s brought it up with Steph a few times, but her advice always amounts to ignoring the rules and sneaking behind Chris’ back. Ben’s not so sure Leslie would be okay with that.

“Hey, man, if it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen,” Andy says, and Ben’s a little surprised by how wise he sounds. The words bounce around his head for the rest of the day. Even Chris trying to set him up on another date can’t bring him down, because Ben’s decided.

It’s gonna happen.

* * *

Leslie has a rough few weeks. Lindsay Carlisle Shay shows up, and Leslie spends a night in jail. She goes head to head with Marcia Langman and just barely manages to win. She hardly ever gets to see Ann, and when she is with Ann all Leslie feels like doing is moping about Ben. Leslie’s always been a positive, look-on-the-bright-side type of person. She really hates this new, miserable version of herself.

Chris tells her and Ben that Pawnee needs a new PR Director for the Health Department, and it’s too perfect. Ann was just complaining about having too many shifts at the hospital. She’ll love the change of pace, and of course she’ll be perfect for the job. Plus, working in City Hall means that Leslie will get to see her all the time. No more fifteen minute coffee catch-ups between meetings. They can have hour long lunches, and maybe even carpool on the way to work! Ann’s house is out of the way from Leslie’s, but Leslie doesn’t mind the extra drive. It’ll be perfect!

She goes straight to Pawnee St. Joseph Hospital, dragging Ann away from a patient to talk to her. She’s already organized everything Ann needs into binders. She’s got snacks and energy drinks, and if Ann just follows her plan she’s a shoo-in for the position. She’s probably a shoo-in for the position already, of course, but Leslie knows that you can never be too prepared.

Ann doesn’t seem enthused about the job, but Leslie knows if she just thinks about it, she’ll come around. “This is your destiny, Ann,” Leslie tells her, and she knows it’s true.

Leslie goes out to the Snakehole to support Tom. She didn’t read his guerilla marketing script, but she shouts out the buzzwords she remembers as she walks across the dance floor. She’ll give him a little encouragement, and then she’ll drive over to Ann’s house to help her review her binders.

“I wish I could stay, I really do, but I have to go help Ann,” she tells Tom and his obnoxious friend Jean-Ralphio. “She’s going to be up all night cramming for a big job interview.”

But Ann isn’t at home studying for her interview. She’s on the dance floor with—is that Howard? Leslie sees red.

“Hey!” Ann says when she notices Leslie, and goes to sit down with her. “I’m so happy to see you!”

“And I am seeing you here,” Leslie says. Her voice is upbeat, but she’s still in shock. It’s one thing for Ann to blow off the interview, but to blow the interview to dance with the Douche? Leslie’s never been so upset. “With Howard. I thought maybe you’d be home preparing for tomorrow.”

Ann tells her that she gave her a ridiculous amount of stuff to read, and Leslie frowns. Since when was trying to help her best friend ridiculous? She takes a shot of Snakejuice, hoping it’ll help soothe her temper.

Howard comes over to their table, and Leslie’s frown deepens. “Please don’t sit with us,” she snaps, not trying to be polite.

“Leslie,” Ann frowns, moving over so Howard can sit between them. “This is my friend Howard Tuttleman.”

“Oh please, call me The Douche,” Howard says.

“I know who he is!” She snaps, glaring over at Ann. “That’s the guy who outed Ben to all of Pawnee. How could you go out with him?”

Ann blinks, looking a little surprised at that. “Wait, what?” she asks, glancing over at Howard.

“A story is a story, Leslie,” Howard says, sprawling in the booth. “It’s nothing personal. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”

“It was very personal!” Leslie says, downing another shot. “Ann, how could you?”

“We’re not going out,” Ann protests. “We just met in the supermarket. I didn’t know who he was.”

“Well, now you know who he is,” Leslie glares. “And I think he should leave.”

“Not everything is about Ben, Leslie!” Ann snaps, downing another shot. “I mean, Howard’s dumb, but he’s fun. That’s the whole point of dating around, is that you get to try on a bunch of different hats.”

“Well, this hat is an idiot,” Leslie says firmly. “And he doesn’t treat people well. You’re better than this, Ann.”

“Ben doesn’t need you to fight his battles, Leslie!” Ann exclaims, and they both take another shot.

Three, four more shots go by. Leslie finally gets Howard to leave, getting angrier and angrier that he’d been there in the first place. She and Ann keep fighting, and not just about Howard. Ben comes up to ask her if she’s okay, and if she were more sober she might ask him the same. She’s not sure if he knows Howard’s here, or if he saw her talking to him. God, does he think she’s friends with that asshole? But the world is spinning around her, and she can’t focus on Ben without wanting to cry. So she storms past him and dances with Jean-Ralphio for a while, glaring at Ann and Howard across the room.

She runs into Ann near the bathroom, and they yell at each other some more. Ann might have a point about her scheduling the interview without checking in with Ann first, but Leslie’s too drunk to accept that. Soon they’re yelling about the snacks Ann brought to their last movie night—no one likes Junior Mints, Ann—and then Leslie’s not sure what they’re yelling about at all. All that she knows is that she’s right, and Ann’s a stupid jerk, and she needs another Snorkjuice.

She’s never been more hungover than she feels the next morning. Everything hurts, and she’s crushed when she thinks back to her fight with Ann. She still thinks Howard is an asshole, of course, but she can realize now that Ann didn’t know. Maybe if she’d approached her differently, Ann wouldn’t have been so defensive. And maybe she shouldn’t have steamrolled her with the interview. Just because Leslie thinks the job is perfect for her doesn’t mean Ann has to do it.

Leslie’s just really, really sad.

* * *

Ben really shouldn’t have done so many shots last night. He throws up in the shower, and dry heaves during the drive to work. Leslie doesn’t look much better when he goes to find her for the interviews. They do their best to be professional, but he can tell they’re both barely hanging on.

“I cannot believe that fight I had with Ann,” Leslie says between interviews, although she won’t say what it was about. She apologizes to him for last night, and Ben wishes that he could pull her into a hug.

He does the next best thing. He drives to Ann’s house, because she and Leslie really need to work this out.

“Are you here to yell at me too?” Ann asks with a groan, flopping back onto her couch.

“Why would I yell at you?” Ben asks with a frown. “Besides, I don’t think I’m capable of yelling. My head hurts so much.”

“You probably should yell at me,” Ann sighs, looking up at him. “I owe you an apology. You and Leslie both.”

“Me?” Ben blinks, because he hadn’t been expecting that. “Look, Leslie doesn’t know I’m here. I don’t know you that well, but you’re clearly very important to Leslie, and that must mean you’re a pretty great person.”

“Not really,” Ann says with a sigh. “Part of the fight was about you,” she adds.

“About me?” he asks, blinking in surprise.

“I kind of went on a date with one of the guys that outed you,” she admits, making a face. “I didn’t know who he was at first, but Leslie was really mad about it.”

“Oh,” Ben blinks again. He’s not sure how to feel about that. He’s not itching to spend time with Crazy Ira and the Douche, but it really doesn’t affect him if Ann dates Howard. It’s not like they’re friends, really. But Leslie spends a lot of time with Ann, and she’d clearly been angry enough about Ann dating Howard to start a fight with her best friend over it. Ben’s a little touched, but still, he’s not going to get in the way of Ann’s dating life. That’s just weird.

“I don’t—I mean, you should date whoever you want to date,” he says after a moment.

“I don’t want to date him,” she shakes her head. “And I’m sorry that I did. He’s an asshole.”

“He kind of is,” Ben agrees. “But look, I know Leslie feels bad. I mean, technically we all do.”

“Yeah, what the hell is in Snakejuice?” Ann asks, “Demerol?”

“All I know is, Leslie’s always talking about how lucky she is to have you as a friend,” Ben says. “And I just wanted you to know that.”

“You’re nice,” Ann tells him. “I can why she likes you.”

That has Ben grinning on the entire drive back to City Hall.


	8. Chapter 8

In the end, it’s all Chris’ fault. 

“I am sending you two on a trip,” Chris says, all smiles as he leans against his desk. “The Indiana Little League Baseball Tournament is upon us, and Pawnee hasn’t hosted in twenty years. So, I would like you two to go to Indianapolis and state our case.”

Ben glances over at Leslie. Her smile isn’t quite reaching her eyes, but she doesn’t protest the assignment. Ben feels a little hesitant himself. He can’t ignore that the last few days have felt particularly sexually charged. He’s found himself making the thinnest excuses to spend time in the Parks Department, and if anyone other than Leslie actually did their job, he’s sure they would have noticed. She makes it hard to focus on work. Even his life out of work has suffered; he spends more time after work thinking about Leslie than he does plotting out Picard’s next story arc in his fanfic.

Despite the tension, he finds himself looking forward to the trip. It’s an excuse to spend time with Leslie outside of work, which he hasn’t done much of in the last few months. And more than that, It’s an excuse to spend time _alone_ with Leslie. It’s a little terrifying, but even more exciting. If it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen now, right?

Leslie doesn’t seem very on board with his plan. He picks her up at her house early the next morning. They’re driving up together to save the government on mileage reimbursement, and Ben had offered to drive. He’d been planning on going up to her porch to knock on her door, but she’s already standing outside when he gets there. She’s wearing a cozy looking jacket and sweatpants, with a garment bag in one hand and a crate full of binders in the other. The drive to Indianapolis really isn’t that long, but Ben can’t fault her for wanting to be comfortable. Maybe she’s planning to sleep on the drive up? 

“I got you coffee,” Ben says with a smile after she’s loaded her things in his backseat. She takes care to buckle in the crate, and then buckles in his briefcase for good measure. It’s adorable. “Your favorite, with extra whip.”

“I’m not thirsty,” Leslie says sharply, frowning at him as she climbs into the car. Ben really hadn’t expected that reaction. She’s clearly on edge, and she reaches to the backseat to grab a binder. 

“Did you sleep well?” Ben asks, glancing over at her. He wonders if the sweats are what she slept in the night before. Her hair and makeup look too put together for her to have just stumbled out of bed, but it’s still an adorable mental image. 

“I did,” Leslie says, looking over at him with a soft smile. Ben meets her gaze for a moment, but then she jerks her head back down towards her binder. “I brushed my teeth this morning!” she exclaims, out of nowhere, and pulls out a booklet from the pocket of her binder. “Using my Sonicare Electric toothbrush. Do you use an electric toothbrush?”

“Uh,” Ben says, glancing over at her questioningly. “No? Should I?”

“Well, 9 out of 10 dentists recommend it,” she says, leaning back in her seat. “It’s fascinating, actually. Did you know that Sonicare brushes deliver up to 62,000 brush movements per minute?”

“Huh,” Ben says, and he really has no idea where she’s going with this. She spends the next twenty minutes outlining the pros and cons of two different brush heads, and Ben just nods and hums his agreement. She moves from toothbrushes to talking about the dorms at Johns Hopkins with a very unconvincing segue, and it’s one of the weirdest hours of Ben’s life. 

“Ann and I burned an awesome CD for the trip,” Leslie says, reaching for her binder. She slips the CD out of its sleeve, and Ben feels himself start to relax. Maybe the music will help settle Leslie’s nerves, and they’ll be able to enjoy the rest of the trip.

The speakers turn on with loud, squealing static.

“Is this the right CD?” Ben starts to ask, but then the static settles down. 

“Good evening,” a male voice begins. “This is a special night for me. Exactly three years ago, on July 15, 1976, I accepted the nomination of my party to run for President of the United States. I promised you a President who is not isolated from the people—”

“Is this Jimmy Carter?” Ben asks, glancing over at Leslie. 

“Shh, shh,” she insists, reaching to turn it up. “It’s about to get good.”

So they listen to President Carter talk about the energy crisis— _a moral and spiritual crisis_ —for the next half an hour. Leslie mouths along to a few bits, but it doesn’t seem like her heart’s in it. Is she really that nervous about the upcoming presentation? Or is this about more than just getting the Little League tournament to come to Pawnee? Does she feel the tension in the air every time she and Ben are in the same room?

Ben makes it through a long, drawn out banjo song before he finally hits his breaking point on a track full of whale sounds. Leslie lets him skip it, and they fall on the first normal song on the entire playlist. She flips through the Little League’s rules and regulations to prepare for their presentation, but the conversation shifts. 

“Have you been to the Grandville Hotel and Spa?” she asks. “They have the softest towels.”

Her eyes meet his, and something in Ben’s chest squeezes. She’s finally relaxing, and laughing while he talks, and all Ben can think about is how much he likes her. He notices an eyelash on her cheek, and he can’t resist the excuse to touch her face. 

“I got it,” he says, holding it up to her face. “Make a wish.”

“Get away from me,” she says in a rush, pushing his hand away from her. Whatever mood there was before is broken. She asks him to let her focus on the presentation, and they finish the drive in silence. Well, except for the sound of the _Learning to Speak Mandarin_ CD in the background. 

They get to Indianapolis, and Leslie goes off to change. They discuss the outline for the presentation while they wait to be called on, but other than that they’re still silent. Ben can tell that this is more than nerves. He knows Leslie’s terrified about the possibility of something happening between them. He’s not sure how much longer he can ignore it. 

* * *

“Muncie is larger. Bloomington is more central. What’s the advantage of doing it in Pawnee?” The Committee asks. Leslie’s still got a smile on her face, but she can tell that they’re not doing well. The Raccoon Debacle of ‘89 is still ingrained in their minds, and she’s not sure that they’re going to get through to them.

“The advantage is that it’s a wonderful city,” Ben starts. He tells the committee that of all the towns he’s been to in Indiana, Pawnee is special. He talks about the people, how passionately they love their town. She can see from his face how much he believes it, how much he’s really come to love Pawnee. She thinks back to Mean Ben, who was concerned with little more than slashing budgets. She thinks back to Crazy Ira and the Douche, which could have easily made him turn his entire back on the town. But instead, he’d learned to stand up for himself. He’d found a group of friends. He’d slowly started to build a life of his own in the greatest city in Indiana. Leslie knows that no matter what, she wants to be a part of that life. 

Leslie looks over at the Committee, and she can see that they’re hanging onto every word Ben says. He’s done it. Leslie wouldn’t have gotten this one on her own. She’s just as passionate, and she loves Pawnee more than she loves anything—except Ann and waffles—but she still wouldn’t have won the Committee over. But Ben? Ben is level-headed and earnest, and he brings an outside perspective that she doesn’t have. If they weren’t in front of the Committee, if it wouldn’t mean losing their jobs and everything she’s worked so hard for, Leslie thinks she might kiss him. 

Afterwards, Ben texts Chris the good news. They both grab glasses of champagne, and Leslie can’t stop smiling. She’s tried so hard to keep things professional, but she finds herself grasping at straws. She’s out of conversational topics from her binder. The photographer from the event won’t go with them to dinner. It’s just the two of them, and Leslie can feel what’s building. There’s no escaping it. 

The restaurant is nice, and there’s no denying the romantic atmosphere. Ben sits next to her at the small table, and maybe it’s the wine, but she finds herself finally relaxing. He shows her a picture of his nephew that his sister had sent him, and they spend the first part of the meal talking about their families. It’s not a date. She has to keep reminding herself of that, because it’s so easy to forget. It’s so easy to forget about Chris, or the Parks Department, or any of the hundred reasons that she can’t let this happen. All that matters is Ben’s soft brown eyes and the adorable way that he gestures with his knife as he talks. 

“You were really great in that presentation today,” she tells him. He’d brushed off all of her compliments earlier, but Leslie can’t let it go. She needs him to know how much his passionate speech had meant to her. “I like the stuff you said about Pawnee. That was really nice to hear.”

“You know, Pawnee is a really special town,” Ben says, and Leslie can’t stop smiling. “I love living there. And, um,” He pauses, looking down at his plate for a moment. “And I look forward to the moments in my day where I get to hang out with the town. And talk to the town about stuff. And the town has really nice blonde hair too, and has read a shocking number of political biographies for a town, which I like.”

“Oh god,” she breathes, forcing herself to look away. He’s bringing this all out into the open. She can’t run from it anymore, can’t deny what she knows they’re both feeling. What they’ve both been feeling for a long time. Where is Ann when she needs her?

“I’m sorry,” Ben says, but he doesn’t back down. “I know we can get into trouble, but I can’t take this anymore and I feel like we have to at least talk about it.” She loves the intensity in his eyes and the way he stammers over his words. “I mean, it’s not just me, right?”

She should take the out. She should tell him that she respects him as a professional and a colleague, but she doesn’t see him as more than a friend. Not even a friend, really. Workplace associates and nothing more. She can’t do it. She wants this—wants him—so badly, and she’s tired of hearing no. 

“No, it’s not just you,” she tells him, and the look on his face is physically painful. She can’t let this happen. She can’t lose her job. But she can’t lose him either. She makes an excuse and runs off to call Ann, which isn’t as helpful as she needs it to be. Her resolve is breaking, and she goes back to the table ready to throw caution to the wind and jump Ben’s bones.

Luckily, the universe is looking out for her. If not her heart, then at least her career. Chris is sitting at the table when she gets back, and his presence is like being doused with ice water. They end up back at Chris’ apartment, and for a moment some of Leslie’s newfound resolve slips. Ben looks beyond cute in Chris’ running clothes. She’s used to him in dress shirts and slacks, and maybe it’s the three glasses of wine, but she loves seeing him in something a little tighter. The jacket shows off just how narrow his waist is, and Leslie has to look away before her mind goes too far. She could climb into his lap so easily. She could lean in and press a kiss to the stubble on his jaw. There’s an appropriate amount of space between them on the couch, but they’re both facing towards each other. It would be so, so easy to—

“Sorry, I keep myself well hydrated,” Chris says as he bursts out of his bedroom. He talks about the size of his bladder, and how radishes lead to healthy urethras. Leslie’s grateful for Chris. If he keeps showing up when he’s least wanted, then she might actually survive this trip without getting fired. She rushes to the guest room, pulling the covers back and going straight to bed. She can hear Chris and Ben chatting, and the low hum of their voices doesn’t help her clear her head. She’s so pent up from their day, and her head keeps circling back to their conversation over dinner. She’s the best part of his day. He thinks Pawnee is special. He thinks _Leslie_ is special. 

If she weren’t in Chris’ guest room, she’d already have a hand down her sweatpants. Somehow, she manages to resist, but she doesn’t get much sleep that night. The drive back to Pawnee is the polar opposite of the drive to Indianapolis. Chris never stops smiling, and he loves every song on her playlist. There’s no chance of a moment between her and Ben, but Leslie knows it’s for the best. She loves her job. Ben loves his job, and she knows how hard they’ve both fought to get to where they are in their careers. She knows what the stakes are for both of them. Sure, maybe there was the potential for something real between them, but ultimately, it’s just not worth the risk. She’s sure he feels the same way. 

She stops by Chris’ office near the end of the day to drop off the receipts for the expense reports. She’s already got a plan for the evening: she’s going to drink half of a bottle of wine, pour a hot bath, and reread Eleanor Roosevelt’s _You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life._ It’ll be the perfect night.

“Oh, hey,” she says as she turns the corner and nearly bumps into Ben. “Chris just wanted me to drop off these receipts.”

Ben leans against the doorframe to his office. “Oh, well, he’s not here. He took off.”

“Okay,” she says, reaching out to hand him the receipts. He starts to take them, and then he’s moving faster than her brain can process. His arm wraps around her back, and _oh._ His lips are soft against hers, his palm coming up to cup her face. His palm is large and warm, and she feels so delicate as she leans into him. It’s quick, chaste, and then he pulls back. Maybe he wants to give her a chance to pull away, to tell him that they can’t do this. She doesn’t.

She leans back into him, her hand coming up to curl in his shirt. There’s a pros and cons list in a binder back home, a whole list full of reasons why she can’t do this. She can’t remember a single one as he deepens the kiss. All she knows is the feeling of being in his arms, the quick hitch of her breathing as his lips part. This time, she pulls away. 

“Uh oh,” she breathes, meeting his eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice just as quiet. His hand is still on her neck, his thumb gently brushing over her jaw. 

“I’m not,” she decides. Now that she’s had a glimpse of this, of what they could be, she can’t give it up. There will be a conversation later. They’ll have to sit down and figure out if this is a one time thing, or if they want to try to go behind Chris’ back. She’ll worry about all of that later. For now, all she knows is that she wants him. She glances behind her shoulder, double checking that no one is around, and then leans in again. 

Ben has the presence of mind to walk them backwards into the office, shutting the door behind them. He crowds her against the door, cradling her face in his hands. Her heart is pounding, and Leslie racks her brain frantically to try to remember if she’s wearing cute underwear today. Does her bra even match? 

“I’ve wanted this for so long,” Ben admits in between kisses. 

“Me too,” she laughs breathlessly. He starts to trail kisses down her jaw, stopping right under her ear when it makes her sigh. He sucks a gentle kiss, and she’s glad that he’s still supporting her against the door, because her knees are starting to feel a little weak. She tips her head to kiss him again, bringing her hand up to curl in his hair. She tugs on it a little harder than she’d meant to, but it makes his mouth open with a quiet moan. She takes that as an invitation to slip her tongue against his, and suddenly everything heats up. 

His hand slides down her side, resting at her hip. His fingers play over the hem of her blouse, teasing the skin underneath. If they don’t stop soon, she thinks they’re going to end up on Chris’ desk. Ben slots his leg between hers, and she reaches down to rub over him in his slacks. 

“Oh,” he pulls back with a laugh, which wasn’t the reaction she was expecting. Something must show on her face, because he leans back down to kiss her apologetically. “Sorry,” he says, laughing again. “It’s just, you’re squeezing my packer. I can’t actually feel that.”

“Oh,” she says, and then they’re both laughing. She rests her cheek against his, grinning widely. 

“I think,” she says when they’ve both settled down. “That I should go home.”

“Right,” he agrees, taking a step back to put some distance between them. He slides a hand down his shirt, soothing the wrinkles she’s caused. “Right, I should—”

“You should wait a few minutes, and then park a few blocks away from my house,” she tells him, reaching to still his hands. She squeezes his fingers, smiling up at him. “And then we can make out on my couch. What do you think?”

“I think that’s the best idea you’ve ever had,” Ben grins, leaning down to kiss her again. It’s too easy to sink into him, letting his tongue brush against the swell of her bottom lip. They get distracted for a few long moments, but they finally manage to pull apart.

* * *

Leslie has a quick moment of panic when she gets home. In the few moments before Ben arrives, she glances around her house. It’s not as bad as it was before Maria Portlesman from the Rec Center helped tidy up, but it’s still far from clean. Ann called it a scary hoarder’s nest the last time she came over. Leslie considers calling Ben and telling him to just go home, but then she hears a light knock on her back door. All of her worries about her house fly out of her head. 

She’s kissing him before the door shuts behind them, walking backwards towards the couch. She’d rather do this on a bed, but she’s not willing to stop long enough to make it upstairs. She’s already working on his shirt, tugging it out from where it’s tucked into his slacks. 

“If we’re taking off my shirt,” he says between kisses, letting her work on his buttons, “the least you can do is lose the blazer.” 

Leslie pulls away, shrugging off the blazer and tossing it behind her. She reaches for her shirt next, and then she’s sitting in front of him in just her bra. It’s beige, meant for practicality rather than sex appeal, but from his expression, Ben doesn’t have any complaints. 

“Fuck, Leslie,” he groans. He presses kisses down her neck, his hand coming up to unclasp her bra. His hands are warm against her back, and she shivers as his kisses travel lower. 

“Lay back,” he tells her, helping her onto her back on the couch. He’s straddling her now, leaning over her as he kisses down her chest. Once he’s far enough down that a mark won’t show his kisses grow a little harder, sucking pink marks against her pale skin. She likes the idea of having a memento, proof that this really happened whenever she looks into the mirror. Then he’s licking over her nipple, and Leslie can’t think coherently enough to be embarrassed about the noises she’s making. 

“Not fair,” she says when she can finally string two words together. “You should be naked.”

She reaches up for his buttons, finally managing to get his shirt off while he kisses her neck. She was right about how narrow his waist is, and she slides her hand down his side. He’s lean, but there’s a hint of muscle underneath his skin. 

“I think these need to go,” he tells her, undoing the button of her pants. It’s a little awkward on the couch, and she nearly falls off as they try to tug off her slacks.

“Maybe we should take this to the bedroom,” she laughs, sitting up in just her panties. They’re sexier than the beige bra was, and she grins at his expression. 

“Yes, yep, bedroom, yes,” he agrees quickly, helping her up. She leaves her clothes on the couch, taking his hand and leading him upstairs. Her grin is even wider when she notices how his eyes are locked on her ass. 

They get to her bedroom, and she turns on the lamp on her nightstand instead of the overhead light. The room is flooded with soft, warm lighting. Ben pulls her to his chest, kissing her hard and deep. His thumb flicks over her nipple, toying with her until she’s rubbing her thighs together. She reaches down for his fly, unbuttoning his slacks and shoving them down his hips. He kicks off his shoes, reaching down to step the rest of the way out of his pants. 

“Oh, hello,” Leslie tells his butt in a low voice as he bends over to take off his socks. She’s noticed before that it was cute, of course, but this feels like their first formal introduction. 

“What?” Ben asks, looking up at her with an adorably confused expression. 

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she tells him, reaching out to give his ass a squeeze. 

“...Are you talking to my butt?” he asks, straightening back up. 

“Maybe,” she says with a grin.

“You’re ridiculous,” he laughs, and then he’s tugging her onto the bed. She moans as her nipples brush against his chest, his smattering of chest hair tickling her bare skin. His leg slips between hers, giving her something to grind against as he starts kissing her again. 

“I really,” he says breathlessly, pulling away to kiss down her chest, “want to eat you out.”

“Oh,” she breathes, pressing her hips up against his leg. “Yeah. You should do that.”

Ben curls his fingers around her panties, slowly tugging them off. He starts with soft kisses over her mound, teasing her while his hands gently part her legs. She’s a little self-conscious; she hadn’t planned to have sex tonight, and she hasn’t shaved in a few days. Ben doesn’t seem to care, though. He rubs small circles on her inner thighs with his thumbs, and Leslie has to close her eyes. She’s already dripping wet, and she knows she’ll have to change the sheets before they can sleep in this bed tonight. 

He starts with slow, teasing kisses around her clit, riling her up. Leslie curls a hand in his hair, pulling just a little since he seems to like that. He’s an observant lover, quickly learning from her moans and sighs just what she likes. His hips rock against the mattress as he licks over her, and she loves knowing he’s just as turned on from this as she is. It usually takes Leslie a while to come from oral, but it feels like it’s been building all night, from the first time they’d kissed. The last few months of sexual tension is coming to a head, and she’s crying out, clenching down hard around two of his fingers as she comes. 

Ben crawls back up to her, kissing her gently as her breathing settles down. 

“You’re very good at that,” she says with a grin, curling up against him. He laughs, flushing a little at the praise. Her hand strokes down his side, landing over the waistband of his boxer briefs. “Can we take these off?” she asks. 

He pulls away to push them down, and it hits Leslie that she has absolutely no idea what to do. She’s done research, of course, but there’s a big difference between the theoretical and the practical. She wants to make him feel as good as he just made her feel, but she’s not sure how. She leans in to kiss him again, giving herself a moment to get her thoughts in order before she speaks. 

“How do I make you feel good?” she asks in a quiet whisper, her hand cupping his ass. Ben groans, rocking up against her thigh before he responds. 

“Like this,” he says, and he takes her hand in his. He guides it down, showing her how to stroke his clit with her thumb and forefinger. “Like you’re jerking me off,” he explains, groaning once she gets the movement right. His head falls back, and she leans forward to kiss his neck. She learns that Ben’s talkative during sex; there’s a steady stream of swearing and telling her just how good she’s making him feel. 

“Fuck, Leslie,” he gasps, and she speeds up her fingers. She’s feeling a little proud at how quickly she’s gotten the hang of this, and her grin grows even wider when he comes. 

“You’re amazing,” he tells her afterwards, when they’ve cleaned up a little. He curls his arm around her, pressing a gentle kiss to her hair. It’s earlier than she would normally fall asleep, but sex always makes her sleepy.

She wakes up to an empty bed, and for a moment she has a sinking feeling that he’s left. Then she hears Ben puttering around in the kitchen. It smells like waffles, and Leslie’s grinning ear to ear as she makes her way downstairs. 


	9. Chapter 9

The first few weeks are perfect. Ben gets used to waking up in Leslie’s bed—although, after that first night, he almost always wakes up alone. Leslie seems to get by on four hours of sleep and a copious amount of sugar, but it’s early enough in their relationship that he doesn’t feel the need to talk to her about it. They’re still in the beginning stages of things; Leslie’s taken to calling it their bubble. Ben learns to navigate around the clutter in her house, but they never talk about why she’s a little bit of a hoarder. Leslie learns the names of his siblings, but he doesn’t say much about his parents and she doesn’t ask. They brush their teeth together in the morning, but he never lets her see him give himself his shot. It’s a delicate balance of learning about each other without fully letting each other in, but it’s working.

It’s working until Leslie pours coffee down Ben’s shirt and then pushes him into a meeting with her mother.

Ben doesn’t have much experience with meeting the parents. There was Cindy Eckert in high school, back when Ben thought that he was a lesbian. They’d been casual friends, the kind that talked in the hall between classes but not much more. It happened by accident; he’d offered her a ride home when she missed her bus, and the next thing he knew they were making out in the back of his car. She was gorgeous; tall, brunette, a little quirky in a way that really did something for him. She was also heavily in the closet. When her parents came home unexpectedly to find Ben with a hand down their daughter’s shirt, it hadn’t gone well. It could’ve tanked his campaign, but Cindy’s parents were too worried about people finding out that Cindy had kissed a girl to say anything about Ben. Twenty years had gone by, and now Ben was a man and Cindy had three kids with a boy from the football team.

His only other time meeting the parents had only been slightly better. He’d dated Melanie for about six weeks when she’d invited him home for dinner. Her mother had been polite, but Ben had still found himself tripping over all of his words. Melanie had kept pressing beers into his hand, hoping they would relax him enough to have an actual conversation. He’d thrown up in her mother’s rose bushes.

Meeting Marlene Griggs-Knope is the biggest disaster yet. Ben hasn’t let himself imagine meeting Leslie’s parents. Thinking about that leads to thinking about Leslie meeting his family, and that’s a nightmare. If he had thought about it, though, this isn’t how it would’ve gone. And honestly, the whole secretly dating thing should mean they never have to do the hard stuff like meeting parents, shouldn’t it?

So it’s a disaster, and Leslie steps in to do damage control. She helps him prepare for his next meeting with Marlene, and Ben can’t ignore that it’s a little sexy to have Leslie barking orders at him. That’s something he’ll have to bring up later, since he’s already learned how much Leslie likes to roleplay.

He redoes his meeting with Marlene, and then they have to mitigate the disaster of Leslie’s mom hitting on him. Leslie’s solution is for him to run off to Mexico, but Ben doesn’t run away from his problems anymore. He faces them head on. He goes to Marlene’s office and tells her the truth. It’s a risk, but from everything Leslie’s told him about Marlene, he doesn’t think she’ll tell Chris. There’s a tense moment after he finishes speaking, and then she bursts into laughter.

Ben knows how much she wanted to avoid letting the real world interfere with their relationship, so he’s a little worried that she might be upset with him. Fifteen minutes after he leaves Marlene’s office, he gets a text from Leslie asking him to meet her in a supply closet on the fourth floor. He’s not sure what to expect; if she wanted to yell at him, she probably would’ve just asked him to go to Ann’s office. Is this their first fight?

“Holy crap,” Leslie says before he’s closed the door behind him. “That was the hottest thing you’ve ever done.” She pulls him forward by his collar, leaning up on her tip-toes to kiss him. They’re really trying not to do this at work; sure, they kiss sometimes when no one’s around, but this is already a step further than that. She pushes him against the wall of the closet, shoving a hand down his pants without breaking for air.

“We can’t do this here,” Ben groans, but he’s just as pent up. Her nipples are pebbled underneath her shirt, and it would be so easy to reach around and undo her bra.

“We already are,” Leslie says, sucking a kiss on the spot on his jaw that always makes his knees a little weak. Her fingers are practiced now, far from the first hesitant touches the first time they’d had sex. He’s not going to last long, and then he’s going to drop to his knees and eat her out—

A loud crash down the hall makes them jerk apart. Leslie pulls her hand out of his pants, smoothing down his shirt. “We can’t do this here,” she whispers frantically. “Here, grab these and go before anyone sees us!”

Ben hurries out of the supply closet with the roll of paper towels she’d handed him, stammering at whoever passes that the men’s bathroom on the first floor was out. He makes it back to his office without being caught, and his heart rate slows. He’s sexually frustrated, but he realizes that it was a close call. They can’t afford any more close calls.

The thing is, it’s really hard to pretend that he’s not head-over-heels for Leslie. He smiles like an idiot every time he sees her. He’s spending almost every night at her house, but it still doesn’t feel like enough time. They commandeer Ann’s office so that they can hold hands while they work, and while the newness slowly fades, his feelings never do.

“When do I get to meet her?” Steph asks on one of the rare nights that Ben’s at his place alone. He’s lucky that April and Andy aren’t particularly observant, because if they paid attention, he’s sure they’d wonder why he was never home anymore.

“I can’t exactly take her home to Partridge,” Ben says over the phone, cranking up REM on his iPod dock just in case Andy and April are in hearing distance from his room.

“Do you really think you can sustain this?” Steph asks, voicing the fear that’s been bouncing around Ben’s head since this thing started. “You deserve more than sneaking around in hotel rooms.”

“Okay, first off, we’re not sneaking around hotel rooms,” Ben says, frowning at how it makes their relationship sound. They’re not having an affair. He’s not some dirty little secret.

Except sometimes, he wonders. Sometimes, late at night when he’s listening to Leslie talk in her sleep, he wonders. If he weren’t her boss, would Leslie still want to keep their relationship quiet? He hasn’t been called names in public in a while, but it still happens. How would she feel if those names were being thrown at her too? How would she handle the stares they’d get, or the questions people would ask? So far, their dates have all either been in towns where no one will recognize them or in the privacy of her house. Dating in secret means that she doesn’t have to deal with any of the fallout of people knowing that they’re together, and Ben can’t help but wonder if she’d be ashamed of him. He shouldn’t think that; she’s never done anything but support him. She’s stood up for him, even fought with Ann over him. He knows it’s just his anxiety rearing its ugly head, but that doesn’t make the thoughts go away.

“If she really cares about you, she’d find a way to make this work without the lies,” Steph insists. It’s a complete 180 from before, when Steph was telling him to ignore all the rules and just kiss the girl already. Ben thinks that maybe Steph can tell how much the lying is starting to weigh on him. Sometimes he wishes she weren’t so perceptive.

He doesn’t tell Steph when things start to fall apart. Marlene is just the beginning. Ron finds out, and Ben’s never been more mortified in his life. Then they’re in the middle of planning a funeral for a horse—and really, it’s events like this that got Pawnee audited in the first place. Spending $600 on a horse funeral is so beyond fiscally irresponsible, it’s absurd—and Ben can’t manage to keep his hands off of Leslie for more than a few minutes. George from maintenance catches them, and Ben sees his entire career flash before his eyes. More than that, he sees Leslie’s career.

Because the thing is, getting caught is going to be much worse for her. When it comes down to it, he’ll look like a sleeze. He’ll look like someone who took advantage of his power and made a pass on one of his subordinates. It’s unethical, and it’ll get him fired, but it won’t be the end of his career. Councilman Dexhart is proof enough of that.

But Leslie? Leslie might not recover. The scandal will stick to her for the rest of her career, whispers of her sleeping with her boss to get ahead following her wherever she goes. All of her accomplishments will be tarnished, and it won’t matter how hard she works. Leslie is brilliant, driven, and cares more about the work than anyone else Ben has ever met. No one will care. Ben realizes with a sinking feeling that Steph is right. This isn’t sustainable. It’s either going to end with them getting caught or breaking up, and as much as he hates it, it’s clear which of those it has to be.

He pushes those thoughts down for a little while. If he ignores it, he can keep having movie marathons on Leslie’s couch. He can keep falling asleep with her curled against his chest, and waking up with her mouth on him when she’s feeling particularly lascivious. Despite the hiding, despite all of his doubts, Ben’s never been happier. He’d never thought he’d get to have someone like Leslie. She doesn’t think he’s nerdy or awkward; she laughs at his jokes and writes sexy Lord of the Rings inspired emails with him when they’re bored at work. She’s quickly become the center of his world, and he’s not sure what his life will look like without her in it. Now that he knows what being with Leslie is like, how can he ever settle for anything less?

Life won’t let him ignore it for long. First there’s the meeting with the Ladies’ Yacht Club. He does a double take when he sees a man there, and then some Googling when he’s back at his office. Pawnee doesn’t have a yacht club, so either Leslie’s joined Eagleton’s, or she’s hiding something. The pieces click together when her sleep-talking gets so enthusiastic that it wakes him up from a dead sleep.

“I am Leslie Knope, and I am running for City Council.”

He leans back against her headboard, watching her. She reaches out for him instinctively, curling against his chest in her sleep. Her murmurs grow louder, more pointed, and although some of it is straight nonsense—she says she’s going to start a kindergarten for Pawnee’s raccoon population at one point—Ben feels himself tearing up. Pawnee’s already become his home, and he wants what’s best for it. There’s no question that Leslie is what’s best for Pawnee. She’s got his vote, and she hasn’t even told him she’s running yet. He knows what he has to do.

He spends an hour designing the button and another hour trying to convince the button maker to just make one. It’s a symbolic gesture of support, and the fifty button minimum really shouldn’t apply here! In the end, he walks out with fifty buttons, so he really hopes Leslie likes the design enough to use the extras for her campaign. He finds a box, prepares his speech, and tries to find the perfect time to give it to her.

The first obstacle comes in the form of Joe from Sewage. Ben’s email pings, and he opens the attachment without really thinking about it. As far as dick pics go, it’s incredibly mediocre. Seriously, how hard is it to use decent lighting? In any case, Ben’s glad to finally have an excuse to fire Joe.

He’s less glad when he realizes that Joe had sent the picture to every woman in the government. Every woman, that is, and Ben. It’s a punch to the gut, a reminder that even though his life has been pretty great lately, some things will never change.

He’s still in a funk when Steph calls later that afternoon. Henry’s wife had her baby, and she wants to know when Ben is planning on visiting. Maybe they can plan their trips together; it’s been years since all of the Wyatt siblings were in the same place at the same time. Because this day can’t get any worse, Ben has to tell her that he hasn’t been invited. Technically, Henry never even told him about the pregnancy. His mom had mentioned it during a phone call a few months ago, and Ben had just pretended that he already knew.

Steph knows that things between the two of them are strained, but clearly she hadn’t known the extent of it. She wants to try to fix things, and it leads to an argument. Ben hates arguing with Steph. He hates how emotional she gets while he clams up. He hates knowing that she’s only trying to help, but that anything she does will just make the situation worse. Most of all, he hates knowing that his big brother cares so little about him that he didn’t even bother to call to tell Ben about the birth of his daughter.

All in all, it’s a really shitty day. Maybe it shouldn’t break his resolve to end things with Leslie, but it does. He’s not going to tell her about any of it. He doesn’t want to dump his feelings onto her, not when he knows in a few days they won’t even be dating. Being with her makes him feel better, and that’s enough. He watches her on Perd Hapley, his chest swelling with pride. She’s powerful, and strong, and she takes his breath away. He orders an eclair shaped like an L and ignores the fact that everything is about to fall apart.

Leslie bursts into tears in his office, and it’s clear that she needs comfort just as much as he does. He nearly drops the eclair as he rushes forward to hug her. She tucks her head against his neck, and all he can think about is how much he’s going to miss this.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he whispers, stroking her hair.

“I’m not crying,” she sniffles, and he holds her tighter.

“I think you should eat this eclair,” Ben says, pressing a kiss to her hair. “And then we should go back to your place. I’ll cook dinner, we’ll watch a movie, and everything will be okay.”

“Do you promise?” Leslie asks him, pulling back to look at him with watery eyes. Deep down they both know that everything isn’t going to be okay. They can ignore it for a little longer, but soon it’s going to come crashing down around them. Ben can already feel how much it’s going to hurt when it does.

“I promise,” he says, because he needs this. He needs to pretend that they’re okay for just a little while longer.

“I’m not sharing my eclair,” Leslie tells him, which makes him laugh. He reaches out, brushing away her tears with the pad of his thumb.

“Of course not,” Ben grins, leaning down to give her a soft kiss. Chris is already gone for the day, but it’s still a risk he shouldn’t take. “If I’d expected you to share, I would have asked them to spell out your entire name.”

“Ooh, do you think they could do that?” Leslie exclaims, and just like that, they’re okay again.

They take separate cars back to her house, but as soon as they’re together again they can’t take their hands off of each other. She keeps a hand on his ass while he chops carrots, and even after dating for this long he’s still not used to the distraction.

“You’re not allowed to squeeze my butt when I have a knife in my hand,” Ben tells her, not for the first time.

“Ben, I spend ten hours a day refraining from squeezing your butt while we’re at work,” Leslie says, slipping her hand into his back pocket. “You can’t expect me to restrain myself in the privacy of my own home. I’m only human.”

“I really don’t understand your fascination with my ass,” Ben laughs. He sets down the knife—safety first—and turns to kiss her.

“I really don’t understand your fascination with vegetables,” Leslie tells him, already reaching for the buttons on his shirt. He’s made it twenty minutes into cooking dinner with all of his clothes on. That might be a record.

“What do you want tonight?” Ben asks, reaching down to undo the button of her slacks. “Hillary Clinton? Eleanor Roosevelt?”

“No,” Leslie shakes her head, sliding his shirt off of his shoulders. “Just you tonight. I just want us.”

They forget about dinner. He takes her upstairs. He lays her out on the bed, kissing every inch of her body until she’s begging him for more. He fucks her slow and sweet, pouring everything into it like he’s saying goodbye. If this is his last time with her, he wants it to end like this.

It isn’t his last time with her, because neither of them are good at keeping it in their pants. Leslie wakes him up with a plate of waffles and sucks him off while he eats, and then he repays the favor until they’re nearly late for work.

His day is only marginally better than yesterday. When he and Chris fire Joe from Sewage, Joe leers at Ben and asks if it’s because he’s jealous. Chris comes to Ben’s defense, tells Joe there’s something wrong with his testicles, and has him forcibly removed from the building. It should be satisfying to watch Joe get dragged out by Artie, but Ben’s too annoyed to fully appreciate it.

He makes reservations for dinner at a restaurant a few towns over. He and Leslie take separate cars, and Ben tries not to think about how miserable his drive home is going to be. He thinks he’ll wait until after dinner, but before dessert. He’ll give her the button, tell her she has his vote, and try to keep it together as he watches the best thing that’s ever happened to him walk out of his life.

Leslie doesn’t let him, because of course she doesn’t. She runs out of the restaurant before they even get their wine, and she doesn’t answer any of his calls that night. She calls in sick the next day at work, and when Ben drives by her house, she’s not there. He wonders if she’s run off to Belize, or Mexico, or any of the other countries she always brings up when she doesn’t want to deal with her problems. He wonders how he’s supposed to break up with her when she’s disappeared off the face of the Earth. Maybe a notarized letter?

She comes back before he can find a notary, and she schedules a meeting with him. Seeing her name on his calendar reminds him of the first few weeks he’d known her, when she had called him Mean Ben and scheduled fourteen meetings back-to-back during the shutdown. He’d had no idea how quickly she would work her way into his life.

He gives her the button and they break up. It doesn’t hurt as much as he expected it to, not at first. She still looks at him like she can’t believe he’s real. It helps knowing that her feelings haven’t changed. Maybe it’s better this way, he thinks. Maybe it’s better for them to end things on good terms, when they both still really like each other. His memories of her will always be warm and bright, and he’ll never think of her the way his parents think of each other. He’ll follow her career on the sidelines, reading the paper whenever her name comes up. Maybe someday, ten years down the line, he’ll be able to tell people about how he used to date the first female president of the United States.

She announces her candidacy, and Ben watches from the crowd. She still takes his breath away, and he knows he’s done the right thing.

It’s not until he gets home that he remembers that his dick is still in the nightstand next to her bed.


	10. Chapter 10

It should be the happiest time in Leslie’s life. She’s been dreaming about this moment for years; her kindergarten dream journal was only the start. She has three boxes full of campaign speeches, and those are just the ones she’d written in high school. It’s not just a far off dream anymore; She’s actively running, and she’s got the support of political scouts that think she really has a shot at winning. She’s still coming off of the success of Harvest Festival, and she’s accomplished more in the last six months at the Parks Department than in the entirety of her career. She’s got a wonderful group of friends—especially Ann, whose beauty is only surpassed by her ability to bring Leslie waffles when she most needs them.

Leslie’s been needing a lot of waffles lately.

She pours herself into her campaign. If she keeps moving, she’s fine. It’s just those rare moments where she slows down when things start to hurt. She’ll be walking down the hall and see him, and she’ll smile because seeing Ben always makes her smile. Ben doesn’t smile back, or when he does, it’s tight and doesn’t reach his eyes. They’d promised to stay friends, but he starts going days between replies to her texts.

It hurts. She’s lost a boyfriend and a friend all in the same instant. She thinks she might be able to wear him down eventually, might be able to gain his friendship again. She doesn’t know how she’ll survive if she can’t.

Editing her book is a good distraction. She hadn’t intended for it to be published. _Pawnee The Greatest Town In America_ had started out like most of her projects, in the form of a three ring binder. She’d been compiling a history of Pawnee over the last few years, and she knew it would come in handy on the campaign trail. When William suggested that she clean it up for publication, Leslie was only upset that she hadn’t thought of it herself.

She’s not thrilled with his suggested edits. He cuts out three poems about RBG and cuts four pages from her section on JJ’s. Even still, she’s thrilled when she sees the final copy. She gets a copy for everyone in her life, from her mother, to beautiful Ann, to her favorite barista at the coffee shop near work. And everyone gets a personalized inscription, of course. Her book is a love letter to Pawnee, and Pawnee is a town worth loving because of each of the wonderful people who live in it.

Okay, well, maybe not because of Marcia Langman. Or The Douche. But everyone else!

She saves Ben’s copy for last. She doesn’t even consider not giving him one; regardless of their breakup, he’s one of her favorite people. He’d printed up campaign buttons for her. He’d chosen Pawnee over going back to Indianapolis. He’d helped her make the Harvest Fest a reality. He’d finally come around on L’il Sebastian—and of course, there’s an entire section on L’il Sebastian in her book, may he rest in peace. How can she put everything she feels about Ben up into words? She wants to be honest, but at the same time, she knows that she has to keep it professional. She’ll give it to him at work, which means that anyone could read over his shoulder. She can’t exactly tell her coworker how cute his butt is, can she?

She supposes she shouldn’t tell her ex-boyfriend that either.

One night, a documentary comes on TV that she remembers watching with Ben. Her memory of it is spotty; she’d ended up on her knees between his legs before the end of it. It’s meant to be positive and inspiring, but somehow she finds herself in tears. She misses him so badly that it feels like a physical ache. How is she supposed to move on? How’s she supposed to ignore the gaping hole in her life?

She reaches for a pen and the copy of her book she’d earmarked for Ben. She doesn’t let herself think too hard. She just pours out her heart. She outlines everything she’d felt for him since before they’d started dating up until their breakup. A couple of teardrops smudge the ink, but she just keeps going. When she’s finished, she’s written eight pages, and in the margins of four more.

She can’t give him it. She knows that. It still feels nice to write it all down.

The Battle Royal—and then, the return of Tammy One to audit Ron—shifts her attention for a little while. Tammy One is terrifying, and her effect on Ron is worse than Leslie could have imagined. She’s never seen him in pastels before. It’s not a good look.

It’s more of a challenge than dealing with his second wife was, but Leslie doesn’t give up. She finds herself drinking moonshine at work, and it hits her so fast that she can’t even remember how it all ended. She thinks they won. She thinks maybe Ron left Tammy, or Tammy left Ron, or someone had a room full of guns? She’s not sure. The room is spinning, her head hurts, and the floor is nice and cool under her cheek.

It’s not the floor of her office, she realizes. She’s home now, somehow. Who took her home? She knows she didn’t drive herself, but she can’t remember anything between taking her first sip of moonshine and waking up here on the floor. The sky outside of her kitchen window is dark; how much time has passed?

It takes a few attempts to stand up. She blinks at the time on the microwave, trying to get the numbers to stay still long enough for her to read them. Why are numbers so hard?

Ben’s good with numbers! She’s dialing his cell the instant the realization hits her. He can help her.

“Hello?”

“Ben! You need to fix my microwave!” She slumps back against the counter, grinning into the phone. His voice is so nice. It’s rough and sleepy, and it reminds her of how he always sounded after sex. She tells him that.

“Leslie, are you drunk?” he asks. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is that I saved Ron,” she tells him. It’s suddenly very important to her that he knows that. “I saved Ron because I’m a good friend, and why won’t you let me be your friend, Ben?”

He sighs. She can almost picture the way he must be rubbing his temples.

“You’re cute when you’re annoyed,” she tells him before he can respond. “Actually, you’re cute all the time, and it makes me want to make out with your face.”

“Leslie, you can’t—you can’t just call me in the middle of the night,” he tells her. She thinks he sounds sad.

“But I miss you,” she whispers, and suddenly she’s crying. She’s not sure why, but she knows it’s all Ben’s fault.

“I miss you too,” Ben says, and his voice sounds a little shaky too. “But I can’t talk to you right now, okay? I need you to drink some water and go to bed.”

“I like my bed better when you’re in it,” Leslie pouts. She balances the phone against her ear, grabbing a mug and filling it from the tap.

Ben’s silent for a moment, and Leslie wonders if he’s hung up. She finishes her water and refills the mug, and that’s when he finally speaks.

“You’re probably not going to remember this in the morning,” he says. “Which is really unfair. I’m going to be out of sorts for the rest of the week, and you won’t even remember this.”

“I’m out of sorts,” Leslie tells him, dropping her mug into the sink with a loud clang. “You’re—it’s like, why does your butt have to be so cute when I can’t touch it?”

That makes him laugh, just a little. “Go to bed, Leslie,” he says.

“Don’t hang up,” she begs, slowly making her way upstairs. It’s harder not to trip on clutter when she’s drunk. “Wait until I fall asleep.”

When she wakes up, her phone is dead.

* * *

If Ben had thought that breaking up with Leslie would mean she was any less entwined in his life, he was dead wrong.

He remembers watching the Twilight movies in Ramsett Park, back when that man had chained himself to Leslie’s office to try to get the book put in the time capsule. He’s not sure if it was the second or the third movie—he’d given up way before they’d reached the end—but he remembers there was a breakup. He and Leslie had joked about it, quietly so that Tom wouldn’t jump down their throats. The world doesn’t stop turning just because you get dumped. There’s so much more to life than being in a relationship, and it’s ridiculous to let it consume you.

Ben still agrees with that. He still thinks it was a dumb movie, and probably not the best message to send to vulnerable teenagers. At the same time, he can’t help wishing life was a little bit more like Twilight. There was a scene with Bella in her room, sitting still while the months just flickered by around her. Ben wishes life would speed up around him. He’d love to wake up and realize that months had gone by, that he was over Leslie and feeling like himself again. Instead, time drags by, slower than it ever has before. Every time he thinks maybe he’s getting back to normal, he’ll run into Leslie in the hall. She’ll smile, or reference some inside joke from when they were together, and whatever distance he’s tried to put between them will fall apart.

If it weren’t for one drunken phone call, Ben would think Leslie wasn’t affected by their breakup at all. She never slows down. Her campaign charges on. She writes an entire book in the time it takes Ben to write one chapter of his TNG fanfic. (He never publishes it. Leaving the fic abandoned right when it was getting to the good part feels fitting.) She gives him a copy of the book she wrote, an ode to the city of Pawnee. He reads it in the bathtub in one go, until the water turns cold and his fingers are wrinkled.

Life isn’t just pining over what could have been, though. There are phone calls with Steph, who tries to distract him by watching Game of Thrones episodes with him and pointedly not asking about Leslie. He hangs out with Tom a few times, and helps him with his disaster of a company. It’s another Ice Town in the making, honestly, but Tom seems committed to letting it all go down in flames.

Tom and Donna drag him to a spa, and he learns that acupuncture is the most stressful activity he’s ever experienced. He gets dragged along to three different Burberrys and wonders how on Earth Donna and Tom can afford all of this stuff. He’s seen their salaries. They don’t make cashmere sweaters kind of money.

Ben definitely doesn’t make authentic Batman replica money, but he finds himself dropping over a grand on the suit anyway. It’s the most irresponsible thing he’s ever done, up there with Ice Town and dating Leslie despite Chris’ rule. His bank calls him while they’re still at the mall, sure that someone’s stolen his credit card. It’s the perfect out to take the suit back and return it, but Tom and Donna won’t let him. Tom thinks he’s the biggest nerd on the planet, and he’s sure Donna just isn’t saying it out loud. But they listen to him talk, and it’s the first time he’s opened up to anyone since this whole thing happened. It helps.

Walking around the house in the suit helps too. He likes to wear it while he sits at his desk, or while he’s watching Doctor Who reruns on the couch. Andy and April don’t say anything about it, and that almost makes up for what terrible roommates they are. And they really are terrible roommates, even worse than his freshman year roommate had been.

Ben breaks Andy’s nose, and then suddenly they’re brothers.

Ben and Henry never had the type of relationship that Andy has with his brothers. Ben had always looked up to Henry, especially when they were kids. He’d tried to tag along with Henry and his friends, always wanting to be one of the big kids. He wanted to ride bikes and play baseball and do everything that Henry did. Henry just wanted Ben to leave him alone. He’d kick Ben out of his room and demand that he go play with Steph instead. When Ben had come out, Henry hadn’t been as openly hostile as their father, but he’d still made it clear that Ben would never be his brother, not really. Over time, Ben stopped trying at all.

Andy and April still drive him crazy, and he’s definitely going to buy a lock for his room if they keep having sex on his comforter. But he thinks he likes having a brother, all the same.

When Chris forces him to go to The Reasonabilists’ End of the World gathering in the park, Ben’s just glad he’s not being forced on another blind date. He doesn’t love the idea of spending time with Leslie, but he figures there will be enough other people around that he can avoid her. He’ll duck out early, go home, and take another long bath. It won’t be the worst Friday night he’s ever had.

Shauna Malwae-Tweep is a surprise. She’s tall and brunette, the polar opposite of Leslie. He’s not sure if he’s interested or just lonely, but he finds himself laughing at her jokes. She’s coming onto him hard, and it feels good to be wanted. She saw REM at SXSW back in 2003, she tells him, and Ben’s not sure if he’s more excited about their similar taste in music or the fact that she said she’s not a fan of Sarah Mclachlan when he asks. He knows it’s not fair to Shauna to use her as a rebound, but he wonders if this is what he needs to finally get over Leslie.

Leslie’s not on board with his plan. She inserts herself in their conversation, and she’s not even subtle. He really should have seen this coming. She drags him off on a pointless errand, and Ben’s… Ben’s angry.

He’s angry at Leslie, and he’s angry at himself for letting her walk all over him. She doesn’t get to do this. She doesn’t get to choose her career over their relationship and then sabotage any chance of his happiness.

(He knows that’s not true. Even when he’s angry, he can’t fault Leslie for their breakup. She’s making the world a better place. He just wishes he could stand next to her while she does it.)

He doesn’t go out with Shauna. He doesn’t want to take advantage of her, and he knows he’s not ready for more than a casual fling.

Besides, he never asked Leslie for his dick back, and he hasn’t gotten around to ordering a new one.

He goes home and drinks too much, passing out on the couch before Andy and April get back from wherever they are. His head is pounding when he wakes up, and Leslie’s banging at the door. She makes it really hard to stay angry at her.

“Shauna Malwae-Tweep thinks you’re cute,” she tells him. She apologizes for interfering, and tells him that the romantic part of their relationship is over. Ben knows that. He’s known that for weeks, but it still hurts to hear. “I’m sorry. Why don’t you tell Shauna to make herself decent, and I’ll apologize to her as well?”

“Oh,” Ben says, and he wonders if this is his opportunity to ask Leslie for his dick back. Does she know it’s still in her nightstand? Good lord, she hasn’t… she hasn’t used it, has she? But he can’t manage to get the words out, so he settles for, “well, Shauna’s not here.”

Leslie grins at him, and he realizes that he’d walked right into it. It still hurts, but he thinks maybe getting to see that smile is worth the pain. Maybe she’s right, and they can manage to be friends and nothing more. Ben’s at least willing to try.

Leslie is not right. She invites him to help with the Model UN conference as a delegate from Peru. Model UN was one of his favorite parts of high school, and he’s excited to jump back in. He and Leslie make a great team, and doing their secret handshake reminds him of the late nights they’d spent together planning the Harvest Festival. Things were so much easier before they started dating, he thinks. If they’d never dated, if they’d just stayed friends… No, Ben doesn’t want to think about that. He can’t regret having had Leslie, no matter how painful it might be now.

She accidentally slaps him in the face, and it feels symbolic. She’s moving on. Her life is the campaign now, and despite her protests, there’s just no room for Ben in it anymore. He needs to stand up for himself and his own needs. He and Leslie need a clean break.

Things get out of hand. He and Leslie are on opposite sides of a table screaming at each other. All of the emotions from the last few months come pouring out of him. It’s not about the treaty or the conference. It’s about winning. It’s about standing up to her, about showing her that she can’t just walk over people.

They ruin the conference. The breakup has made him miserable, but he hadn’t meant to make everyone else feel miserable too. They’ll have to make it up to the kids. Focusing on that is easier than focusing on how to fix things with Leslie. By the time Andy and April force them into having a conversation, Ben’s already got the entire makeup conference planned out. He knows Leslie will be on board, although it might take some convincing to get her to agree to not be there.

“I just need you to be in my life,” Leslie tells him. “You’re too important to me.”

Ben isn’t sure if he wants to kiss her or cry. The fact that he still wants to kiss her after all of this time makes him want to cry, maybe. He doesn’t do either. He agrees to talk to her once a day at work, even though he’s already sure it’s a futile effort. He can’t stop wanting Leslie.

Late at night, when his resolve is at its weakest, he finds himself rereading the inscription on his copy of her book.

_Pawnee is a better place for having you in it. I’m glad you stayed._


	11. Chapter 11

If being friends with Leslie wasn’t easy, being coworkers is somehow even harder. Ben tries to keep a professional face on at work, but he can’t help the sinking feeling every time he walks into his office to find her sitting at his desk. She’s constantly finding an excuse for them to work together, some initiative that he needs to be a part of or form that needs his signature. Half the time, she makes Chris do her dirty work, and he ends up assigning the two of them to work together.

Everytime they interact, it ends the same way. She’s trying, of course, so she keeps the conversation mostly limited to whatever project she’s working on. She has a million ideas and a million and one contingency plans, and she wants to outline each of them in meticulous detail. Ben watches the fire in her eyes and feels his heart sink. He nods along reluctantly, and then he goes home and sulks in the bathtub until April threatens to break the bathroom door down.

He can’t be around Leslie and not want more. He can’t sit and discuss the best choice for weather resistant benches and not imagine how much better it would’ve been before, when they would have held hands in Ann’s office while they worked. He can’t move on, because moving on means admitting to himself that it’s really, truly over between them. How is anyone ever going to compare to Leslie Knope?

“You can’t keep doing this,” Steph tells him one night, more than fed up with his sulking. “You broke up with her. You can’t let that define the rest of your life.”

“I’m not,” Ben grumbles, but he knows she has a point. “It’s taking me time to get over her, that’s all.”

“It’s been months,” she points out. Ben wants to protest that, say exactly how many days it’s been since they broke up, but that will only make Steph’s point for her.

“It hasn’t been that long,” Ben grumbles. “I need time.”

“Time isn’t going to do much if you keep seeing her every day at work,” Steph tells him. She’s made this argument before; she doesn’t understand why Ben’s staying in Pawnee without Leslie in the picture. She’d thought it was strange that he’d taken Chris’ job offer in the first place after everything with The Douche. Without the excuse of Leslie, living in Pawnee really doesn’t make sense to her.

She means it as an argument to get him to move, maybe end up closer to Partridge so they can see each other more often. Instead, it makes Ben start thinking about his working relationship with Leslie. Maybe things would be easier if he didn’t have to stop by the Parks Department so often. Maybe he would breathe easier if he didn’t always expect to see Leslie when he opened the door to his office.

Leslie’s sitting there now, going on about the ribbon cutting ceremony at the smallest park. Ben sits behind his desk, glad for the barrier between them. He’s not expecting this conversation to go well.

“Listen, I’m actually glad you’re here,” Ben cuts her off.

“Oh, yeah?” she asks. Ben hates how she lights up at that. Maybe this would be easier if it weren’t so obvious that she still wants him too. Maybe he could move on if this thing was unrequited.

“After this project finishes, I’m going to focus on other departments and cut down my time with Parks and Rec.” It should be as simple as that. If Leslie were anyone else, it would be. She’d tell him that she’s sad to hear it, but she understands that he needs to do what’s best for him. Maybe they’d shake hands professionally, and then she’d leave to go wrap up the last loose ends on their project.

Leslie isn’t anyone else, and she’s not going to let him go easily. He tries to be vulnerable with her for a moment, to tell her how interacting with her has been affecting him. She doesn’t listen.

“No, no, no. We’re just working out the kinks!” she insists. “You don’t need to decrease your time with me. In fact, you need to increase your time with me. You need to spend more time with me. That make sense? I think it does.”

It’s like speaking to a brick wall. Leslie does what she wants. She makes decisions without anyone else’s input, and she pushes people around until they bend to her will. Her assertiveness used to be compelling. He used to be in awe of how she got things done, how she never took no for an answer. Right now, though, he just thinks she’s a pain in the ass.

“No, Leslie, listen to me,” he says with a sigh. “After the smallest park wraps up, I am going to ask Chris to take over all Parks and Rec business. Okay?”

“Okay,” she says, her face blank. He knows her well enough to know that this isn’t her agreeing. She’s not going to back down without a fight; she proves that right away by stealing a handful of his pens before she leaves his office.

When he goes to the supply room to replace them, they’re out of blue highlighters. He has to take a yellow one, and he glares down at his spreadsheet every time he uses it.

“Assistant City Manager Wyatt,” Leslie says as she barges into his office that afternoon.

“Leslie,” Ben sighs, “We just talked about this.”

“This is strictly professional,” she tells him, even as she hands him a cup of coffee she’d brought him. If Ben knows her at all, it’ll be made exactly the way he likes it. “I just thought you should know about the public forum scheduled for today.”

“What public forum?” Ben frowns down at his planner. There’s nothing like that on his agenda.

“Well, citizens of Pawnee are very concerned about this smallest park project,” Leslie tells him. She’s a terrible liar.

“Leslie, what did you do?” Ben asks, but she’s already heading out of his office and towards the forum.

Despite Leslie’s attempts to draw out the meeting as long as possible, Ben manages to wrap it up quickly. Well, forty five minutes isn’t exactly quickly, but considering the multi-day time capsule debacle, Ben is calling it a win. As the day goes on, his anger bubbles higher and higher, finally coming to a head when he sees the flyer of bogus activities that she’s made to get people riled up about the park.

He gets Chris to go with him to shut down the protest at the park. He doesn’t trust himself on his own. He’s not sure what he’ll say to Leslie, but he knows he’s not going to let her keep walking all over him. He tells Chris that he doesn’t want to work with Leslie any more and, in an especially petty move, he cuts the ceremonial ribbon himself. He knows it would’ve meant a lot to her to have been the one to do it. He knows she would’ve made a big todo about it, with live music and speeches and oversized scissors. Maybe it’s a dick move, but it feels nice to take that away from her, after everything she’s put him through.

He regrets it by the time he and Chris make it back to the car. The look on her face as he’d walked away sticks with him for the rest of the day.

Ann storms into his office the next day, and Ben is immediately on guard. He’s interfered in Leslie’s relationship with Ann before, so it’s fair enough for Ann to interfere in his. That doesn’t make him any happier about it.

The worst part is that it works. Ann might not be as heavy with the compliments as Leslie is, but hearing her talk about Leslie is a reminder of why Ben fell in love with her in the first place. She’s kind, caring to a fault, always willing to go the extra mile for her friends.

He’s never let himself admit it before, but as Ann leaves his office, he knows it’s true. He’s in love with Leslie. He’s been in love with her for months, far before they broke up. And the time apart has only made it more apparent. If he hadn’t loved her, maybe this wouldn’t hurt so much.

“Ben,” her voice is soft in the voicemail. She takes a deep breath, and Ben hates how shaky it sounds. “You have every right to be angry with me. And I get it if you don’t want to talk to me, but… But I really need to talk to you, just one last time. I want to make this right.”

She asks him to meet him at the park they’d built together that night. Ben doesn’t want to go. Despite Ann’s pleading, despite the fact that Leslie seemed apologetic in her voicemail, he’s sure this is just going to end with him sulking in the bathtub.

He goes anyway. She looks beautiful underneath the streetlight. The juxtaposition of her in the park, showcasing everything she’s accomplished, makes his heart clench. He’s always had a thing for competence.

“I’m trying to be a little less intense and a little more considerate,” she tells him, and he believes it. So he sits down, deciding to give her the time to talk through whatever she’s thinking. It might be the last moment they have together; he can give her that much.

Finally, finally she’s listening to him. She apologizes for steamrolling him, and says that she understands if he doesn’t want to have any more contact with him.

“I don’t want that, really,” Ben says intently. “But I just think it’s for the best.” It hurts like another breakup, stabbing into an unhealed wound. This is it. They’re finally both on the same page. Ben is going to walk away, walk out of her life, and that will be the end of it.

He gets up, because he won’t let himself cry in front of her. He’s going to make it to his car before he lets his guard down. He can stay strong for the fifty feet it takes.

“There is another option,” Leslie blurts out, and Ben turns to her warily. “We could just say screw it and do this thing for real.”

Ben does a double take.

“I miss you like crazy. I think about you all the time. I want to be with you. So let’s just say screw it.”

He can hear the emotion in her voice. She’s completely vulnerable, laying herself bare for him. It would be so easy to walk away, to doubt that she means it. The repercussions are huge. Both of their careers in the balance, and her campaign. Nothing has changed since he broke things off. There’s no rational reason for them to get back together, and Ben prides himself on being rational.

“We would have to tell Chris. It could turn into a scandal—” he starts. Maybe if he focuses on the facts, he can ignore just how badly he wants this. “It could hurt your campaign, I mean, how would you imagine we do this?”

“I don’t know,” she says shakily. “But I know how I feel. I want to be with you.” She takes a breath, and Ben can see the hesitance in her face. She wants to take charge, but she’s holding herself back for his sake. “But I’m done steamrolling people. This is how I feel. How do you feel?”

He’s kissing her before he can talk himself out of it. She melts into his arms, and it’s exactly like it used to be. She’s sighing against his lips, her fingers sliding through his hair. She tastes like coffee and sugar, and her shampoo hasn’t changed. It’s familiar, like sliding into clean sheets at the end of a long day.

Only they’re kissing in public, where anyone could walk by and see them. There’s nothing familiar about that. He wants to pull back, to ask her if she’s sure. As her fingers curl into his jacket, he knows what the answer to that would be. They’re doing this, hell or high water.

“Come home with me?” she breathes, not pulling away.

He parks in her driveway, and there’s something so luxurious about that simple fact. He feels free, open in a way that’s almost reminiscent of how liberated he’d ended up feeling after being outed.

As soon as the car is in park, Leslie’s climbing over the console and into his lap. “I’ve missed you so much,” she tells him, and her voice is thick with unshed tears. He kisses her before she can start to cry, because his own emotions are just as near the surface. She settles into him easily, her hand slipping in between his jacket and shirt. The kiss grows heated quickly, until he’s kissing down neck and it makes her arch backwards. Her back hits the steering wheel, and they both jolt at the sound of the horn. She dissolves into laughter, her face pressed against his neck as she giggles.

“Maybe we should go inside before we wake the neighbors,” he laughs, reaching for the car door. They untangle themselves and head to the porch. It takes her a few tries to get her key in the door, since he’s curled around her back kissing over the same spot on her neck.

“You’re very distracting,” she accuses him, but the moan in her voice gives her away.

“I have to make up for lost time,” he breathes, pressing her against the door as soon as they’re inside.

“Not—oh god, Ben—not here,” she gasps, clutching him closer. She’s rocking against Ben’s leg, and he can feel the heat between her legs through the layers of clothing separating them. “I want you in my bed.”

Ben isn’t going to say no to that. He starts stripping on the way upstairs, leaving his shirt and jacket thrown over the boxes she has crammed into her house. She follows his lead, kicking off her shoes and flinging off her blouse.

“You’re gorgeous,” Ben breathes when they make it to her room. Her bra and panties don’t match. She’s wearing a bra that’s gone off-white from age, and he knows when he takes it off of her there will be a red mark from where the underwire is poking out. She’s tired after a long day, an emotional one at that. Ben’s sure she hasn’t been getting enough sleep since well before her campaign started. She’s still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“So are you,” Leslie says, and her hand comes around to squeeze his ass predictably. She leads him over to the bed, tugging off his boxers before he sits down on the edge. “I’ve put you through so much in the last few weeks,” she tells him, and Ben’s already shaking his head in protest. “No, I have,” she insists, and then she sinks to her knees. “Let me make it up to you?”

Ben has an argument in the back of his head about how she doesn’t owe him anything, but he can’t get the words out. She’s pressing soft kisses to his thighs, smiling up at him when he makes a quiet sound. Her hair drapes around her face, blocking his view as she finally kisses him. It doesn’t take long for his head to fall back, slipping his hand into her hair as she laps over him. Her lips curl around his clit, sucking him into her mouth, and he lets out a moan. He can feel from her movements how satisfied she is, smug to have him falling apart so quickly. There’s something soft and sweet there too, with her thumb rubbing gentle circles on the outside of his thigh.

When he pulls her up a moment later, he can taste himself on her lips. She straddles his lap, kissing him deeply as her hands tangle in his hair. His hands slip to her back, unclasping her bra and letting the straps fall down her shoulders. He can’t help but pull back to look, even as much as he wants to keep kissing her. He watches the bra slip off, her nipples pebbling in the cold air. He kisses down her neck, his thumb flicking over her nipple. She’s malleable underneath him, and he eases her down onto her back. He gets his knee between her legs, giving her something to grind against while they kiss. She’s already soaked, desperate for more as she rocks into him.

Ben’s sucking kisses down her chest, one hand on her hips while the other reaches blindly for the nightstand. He gets the drawer opened, but his hand comes back empty.

“Where are you going?” Leslie asks as he pulls away to look.

“Where’s—it should be here,” he mutters to himself, looking through the drawer.

“Oh,” Leslie laughs. “I was going to give it back to you,” she tells him, getting up and crossing to her dresser. There’s a box there, and she kicks off her panties as she brings it back over to the bed. “But then, well, it seemed weird to bring your dick to City Hall, and we never saw each other outside of work.”

“It felt weird to ask for it back,” Ben admits with a laugh.

They’re both still giggling as he gets the straps on, falling into each other in a way that still feels familiar. He cradles her in his arms, pressing in with a slow rock of his hips. She’s just as on edge as he was, so it doesn’t take long for things to heat up. Leslie reaches for his ass, squeezing as she guides his movements until he’s doing exactly what she wants. The angle makes his clit grind against the base of his dick with every thrust, and soon he’s just as close.

“We need to think about how we’re going to tell Chris,” Leslie says afterwards, when they’re still naked and curled together.

“We need to not talk about Chris in bed,” Ben says, making a face. “But… I don’t think this is something we can plan for. I say we just sit down and tell him, and see how the cards fall.”

They walk into Chris’ office on Friday hand in hand, ready to face this thing head on. Ben’s got a sinking feeling that at least one of them won’t be walking out of City Hall still employed. He just hopes it’s him. Leslie’s given her entire life to Pawnee; she deserves to keep her job.

That thought bounces around his head during the lead up to the ethics trial. Leslie’s busy doing research and preparing for every possible outcome. She can’t think about anything but the trial, and Ben’s pretty sure she’s gotten a total of four hours of sleep throughout the whole weekend. She doesn’t even notice when Ben leaves to go to the toy store for her present. When he gets back to her house, she’s talking to him about the trial as if he never left.

There’s one bright moment amongst the rest of the chaos and stress from the trial. Leslie enlists all of the Parks Department for help, and their relationship is finally out in the open. There’s some friendly teasing—especially from Tom, who keeps bringing up the fact that he’d kissed Leslie before Ben ever had—but Ben can tell that they’re all happy for them. And he can finally put that last insecurity to bed, because it’s clear that despite how stressed about the trial she is, Leslie isn’t ashamed of Ben at all. It’s been about their careers this entire time. It’s never been about Ben. However this all turns out, they’ll have each other.

The worst part about her trial is that Ben can’t be in the room as it happens. He tells Leslie he’ll be sitting in the hall the entire time, but he can’t keep still. He paces up and down the hallway, turning every time he hears the door open. He asks each witness for updates as they leave, and they’re all varying degrees of unhelpful. When he watches Tammy Two walk in, he starts to panic, but she’s in and out in under five minutes. He has no real idea of how it’s going in there, but it seems like Leslie is holding her own.

He lets himself start to believe that maybe this is all going to be okay.

And then he sees George from Public Works walking down the hall, and he realizes just how screwed they are. He feels like an idiot for forgetting. How could he be so blindsided by this?

There’s no talking their way out of this. They made the bribe, and Leslie won’t lie about that. This can’t end any other way. Leslie’s going to get fired. They’re both going to get fired.

They take a recess, and Ben’s walking down the hall before he’s fully formed his plan. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do next, doesn’t know what this means for his career. But he knows that he can’t let Leslie go down with him. He doesn’t want her to ever think back to the moment when she picked being with Ben over her career and wonder if she made the right choice.

Because for him, the choice is easy. He’d pick Leslie Knope every time.

* * *

Leslie’s emotions are in a whirlwind. She’s head-over-heels in love, that’s the main thing. She’s waking up next to Ben every morning. Now that they’re not hiding, she can stay at his place as often as he stays at hers. Of course, staying at his place means dealing with Andy and April, who appear to be showing their support of the relationship by bursting into Ben’s room without knocking.

They can finally go on dates in Pawnee without worrying about getting caught. Leslie might go a little overboard on the PDA, but it’s so hard not to squeeze Ben’s butt whenever she wants now that she can. And the thing is, Leslie almost always wants to be squeezing Ben’s butt.

There’s sex. It turns out when you and your boyfriend are both unemployed, there is a lot of time for making out. In the first three days since her suspension started, Leslie thinks she and Ben might have had sex more times than the entirety of their previous relationship.

Underneath all of the good things, though, there’s a big ball of stress in her stomach. Her campaign advisors want her to sit back and relax. Chris won’t let her do work at home. And watching Ben apply for jobs brings up waves of guilt, because she still can’t wrap her head around the fact that he did that for her.

Leslie can’t slow down. She can’t sit still for two weeks and relax. She refused to stop for the government shutdown, and she can’t be expected to stop for this either. Ben points her in the right direction, because he’s brilliant and always has the best ideas. She forms the PCP and is finally starting to feel productive again. She’s getting work done from the outside, and surely that proves just how cut out she is for office. Think of how much more she could accomplish from the inside!

Her campaign managers don’t agree. William and Elizabeth tell her that she’s polling at 1%, and then her campaign is over before it ever really started.

Chris cuts her suspension short, and then the Parks Department has its Christmas party. They make her a gingerbread office, and it’s beautiful. Leslie knows that a few years ago, they never would’ve managed to work together on a project without her forcing them into it. But now they’re a team, a real team, and they came together to make something just for her.

They come together to run her campaign, and now Leslie’s really crying. She’s overwhelmed by their support. For once in her life, things feel very nearly perfect.

Except, Ben’s not there. When she meets him back at home that night, she asks why he didn’t want to stick around for the party.

“It’s probably better for me to keep my distance,” he says with a casual shrug. “I mean, between Ice Town and the scandal, I’m practically poison for your campaign.”

She knows he has a point, but it doesn’t sit well with her. She’s proud of her relationship with Ben. She talks about him to practically everyone she meets now, because it feels like such a luxury to be able to drop the words ‘my boyfriend’ casually in conversation.

It’s not just about the fact that she was dating her boss, though, and they both know it. Marcia Langman is up in arms as soon as she finds out that Leslie and Ben are dating. She calls their relationship depraved, even calls Leslie a lesbian at one point. She’s already started organizing against Leslie’s campaign, even though it’s early enough in the election cycle that not many other people have announced their campaigns.

Leslie wishes she could keep Ben out of it. He’s been through this before, and they’d thought it had finally died down. The thing is, keeping Ben out of it seems to be feeding into the narrative that she has something to hide. By keeping Ben out of the spotlight, is she just acting like she has something to be ashamed of? The whole thing has Leslie’s stomach in knots, and while Ben doesn’t say much about it, she can’t tell it’s weighing heavily on him too.

He throws himself into his hobbies, deciding to take a break on the job hunt until he figures out what he’s really passionate about. Leslie doesn’t seem him much during the day, but when she gets home, she can tell that things aren’t going as well as he’s pretending. He hasn’t been shaving, and while Leslie likes the stubble marks it leaves on her thighs, she’s sure that’s indicative of his mental state.

Every time she tries to talk to him about it, though, they end up making out until she’s forgotten what she wanted to talk to him about. He’s very distracting, especially when he’s wearing jeans that hug his tight little butt so well.

Her first campaign event falls apart. Her friends mean well, but things keep slipping through the cracks. At every step of the way, she has the same thought. _If Ben were here_. If Ben were here, he would have double checked that the floor of the sports center was going to be down, and they wouldn’t have gone out on ice. If Ben were here, he would’ve helped her prep her speech until she didn’t need her index cards anyway.

If Ben had been there, even if it had still crashed and burned, she could have slipped into his arms afterwards. What’s the point in running a campaign if she has to do it alone? When she was standing in the smallest park, asking Ben to say screw it, she’d already decided that she was picking being with Ben over her career. Maybe having Ben in her campaign will hurt it, but maybe Leslie doesn’t want those votes anyway. She and Ben are a team, and she’s not willing to ignore that just because it might help her career.

If the past few months have taught her anything, it’s that her life is always better with Ben in it.

“Ben, my campaign manager and I have made a decision,” she tells him.

“We’ve decided to fire the campaign manager—me,” Ann explains.

“And hire you,” Leslie adds.

“But we’ve talked about this,” Ben interrupts, and Leslie can see the hesitance on his face.

“I don’t think you’re poison to my campaign,” she tells him, reaching for his hand. “And I don’t want anyone thinking that Marcia Langman is right, or that I’m ashamed of you. This team has a lot of heart and zero know-how. You’re the only one that can save us. Please be my campaign manager.”

Ben doesn’t need any more convincing than that.


	12. Epilogue

**DC 2019**

“Daddy! Look at me!” Sonia shrieks, running into the kitchen with a grin. Her hair is in pigtails with blue, pink, and white bows. She’s wearing one of the shirts that Leslie made the triplets, _I Love My Daddy_ written over a trans pride flag. There’s a tutu on over her shorts, because she’s in the middle of a ballerina phase and refuses to take it off. Ben thinks she might have even slept in it the night before.

“You look great, baby,” he says with a smile, filling the last of the triplets’ water bottles. He puts them in a bag, and then reaches down to pick her up. The kids are getting a little too heavy to be carried, but that doesn’t stop him. “Are Westley and Stephen ready too?”

“Stephen is Chewie,” Sonia tells him seriously, cuddling against his chest. “Mommy’s trying to stop him.”

Stephen’s worn his Chewbacca mask every time they’ve left the house for the last few weeks, despite Leslie’s protests. Ben has pretended to ask him to take it off, but he can’t deny how much he loves that his kids already share his interests. They’ve only been allowed to watch _Lego Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles_ so far, but Ben thinks by the end of summer they’ll be ready for _A New Hope_. Not having seen the original trilogy hasn’t stopped Ben from filling their toy box with Star Wars toys, and buying every Star Wars picture book he can find. Leslie allows it, mostly because she’s done a similar job indoctrinating them with Harry Potter. Not to mention the whole shelf full of books like _I Look up to... Ruth Bader Ginsberg_ and _The Little Feminist Board Book_. The triplets are very well rounded.

“Are we all ready to go?” Leslie asks when he walks into the triplets’ bedroom. She grins up at him from where she’s painting a rainbow on Westley’s cheek.

“The snacks are all packed,” he tells her, setting Sonia down. “And I already loaded the wagon into the back of the van in case any of them get tired during the parade.”

“I won’t get tired!” Stephen says from behind his Chewbacca mask. “I’m going to march the whole time.”

“I’m going to dance the whole time!” Westley says, bouncing a little where he sits. “Right, Mommy?”

“Of course,” Leslie says with an indulgent smile. “The wagon is just in case.”

Sometimes Ben’s still shocked that he got here. He can barely remember the person he was before he met Leslie. What was it like to be so reserved? What was it like before he was openly proud of who he was, and had an amazing partner to support him? It feels like his life didn’t start until he met Leslie.

And now he has more than just Leslie, because Leslie doesn’t do things by halves. She’d gotten pregnant after her first bout of IUI, and then they’d been surprised with three little blobs on the ultrasound instead of one. Ben had been terrified, but now when he looks down at the three little faces smiling up at him, he can’t imagine life without them. Back when he was a closeted teen in Minnesota, he never could’ve dreamed that he’d get to have all of this some day.

“Time to get everyone loaded into the car,” Leslie says, picking herself up off of the floor. “Come on, kids, it’s party time!”

The kids laugh as they run towards the garage, and somehow manage not to run into each other.

“Are you ready, Congressman?” Leslie asks, slipping an arm around him and pressing a kiss to his cheek. It’s not the first time he’s marched in the parade, of course, but it’s the first time he’s been asked to speak afterwards.

“I’m more worried that one of the kids will fall off the stage than I am about the speech,” Ben jokes, squeezing her waist. They’d run through his speech a few times the night before, and it had made Leslie tear up every time. He hopes she’s wearing waterproof mascara today.

They were surprised when Jen approached him about running for Congress. Sure, Ben had run a few campaigns and been City Manager of Pawnee. He had the experience, but was Indiana ready for its first openly trans Congressman? Ben was torn. Running for office again was a dream he’d long thought was already dead. At the same time, he’d seen first hand what Jen could do. If anyone could pull this off, it was her.

“You deserve this,” Leslie had said when they’d talked about it. “You’re qualified, and I know you’ll represent our district well. You have to run.”

“What if Indiana isn’t ready for me?” Ben had wondered.

“Pawnee wasn’t ready for you,” she had told him. “But you came anyway, shook everything up, and made it a better place.”

So he ran, and somehow, he won. Leslie was by his side every step of the way, and together they became the political power couple she’d always dreamed of.

“No one will fall off the stage. I’m putting one of your aides on triplet wrangling duty,” Leslie promises him. She glances around, making sure that all of the kids are in the garage and safely out of hearing range. “And tonight, after we’re back home and the little monsters are asleep, you and I are going to celebrate.” Her hand slips to his ass, giving it a promising squeeze.

Ben's pretty sure that life can’t get better than this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's a wrap! This was my first multi-chapter story and I had a lot of fun writing it. Thanks to everyone who read and supported this fic :)


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